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1 month ago
17 Peter Schmeichel and Roy Keane were not particularly close friends during their time together at Manchester United. They would fall out from time to time, or alternatively brawl in the corridor of a hotel in Hong Kong.
As you do.
The former Manchester United goalkeeper now says all those fractious relationships were down to the energy that drove the dressing room, with big personalities including Roy Keane and Gary Pallister.
However, Schmeichel joined Keane on this week’s episode of Stick to Football and spoke about that incident in Hong Kong.
“You can take any footballer who has been in situations like that, and I don’t see that as important,” Schmeichel said. “It irritates me that things like that are brought up sometimes because it’s so irrelevant.
“It goes back to the same thing. We were those kinds of people back then and would do anything to win. It kept you in a certain mentality. Then you start playing and you become like that. There’s no way I can be like this now, it’s too much energy.
“We were in Tokyo the next day and I had to do a press conference, and it was funny. I had a little scar, and the media asked where I got that from. Roy [Keane] hurt me. They thought I was taking the piss, but it was just funny that we had to do that the next day.”
In Keane’s second autobiography, The Second Half, the former Republic of Ireland captain described the incident from his own perspective.
“I think we were in Hong Kong… There was drink involved. Myself and Nicky Butt had a night out and we bumped into Peter at the hotel reception desk. It was about two in the morning. We said a few words to one another, a bit of banter, a bit of stick. I went up to Nicky’s room for some room service, had a sandwich, got up to go… Peter was waiting for me, outside the room.
“He said; ‘I’ve had enough of you. It’s time we sorted this out’. So I said; ‘Okay’. And we had a fight. It felt like ten minutes. There was a lot of noise. Peter’s a big lad.”
Keane is now in agreement that edge was part and parcel of being a Manchester United player. The top players had an edge about them.
“United players would always go off at each other because that is how it always was. There was a big edge to everybody. There were big personalities, and we were all trying to win. There was an edge to the training ground, to training, the boxes, the possession, the running. There was always that edge. Players and the manager wanted to win. The training led to arguments, disagreements and fights, but it was all a part of the package.
“It’s what made Manchester United and there was energy. If you went to Manchester United’s training ground, we would always get stuck into each other and it was constant. Something could always go off.”
Schmeichel adds that Sir Alex Ferguson thrived on confrontation and encouraged it from his players.
“What I learned very quickly was that Sir Alex Ferguson needed an out. Very often it was in games where things were going well, or he needed something off his chest. He had certain players that he would do that to. I was one of them, Gary Pallister was one of them and Roy Keane was one of them. Ryan [Giggs] was also one of them. It would have been brutal to watch but you were allowed to talk back as a player. He wanted that confrontation because it was shaking things up. He wanted that.”
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