There was always likely to be an element of controversy in a Roy Keane Manchester United selection, but despite a couple of controversial omissions, it’s not a bad side.
The current Ireland assistant manager was asked to pick the best Manchester United team from the players he played with at Old Trafford from 1993-2005 as part of an ITV documentary about himself and Patrick Vieira, which airs on ITV 4 tonight at 10pm and his United selection was the latest clip from the documentary to be leaked, featuring in the Daily Mirror this morning.
Quite a few great players shared a dressing room with Keane during that time so it wasn’t exactly an easy selection (see his team in full at the bottom of the page), but the calls that will probably elicit most debate amongst United fans are the exclusions of the evergreen Ryan Giggs and the man who partnered Keane in the midfield engine room for years, Paul Scholes.
Keane did admit that he would have had Scholes in the team had he not had to pick himself, but he was less conciliatory about the omission of Giggs, saying: “Having a great career doesn’t mean you are a great player – there’s a big difference. I’m not saying Giggsy wasn’t (great), but do I leave out Ronaldo, one of the world’s great players? Do I leave Becks out?”
It was put to Keane that his team included a lot of players who, as he did, clashed with Ferguson during their time at the club – Stam, Ince, Beckham and Van Nistelrooy, for example – but the boy Roy responded by saying: “You don’t win titles by having choirboys in your dressing room.
“Did Beckham challenge the manager? And it doesn’t mean you are challenging the manager if you marry a certain woman – far from it.”
So was there anyone else unfortunate to be left out of Keane’s XI or was he not too far off the mark? Gary Neville maybe? Rio Ferdinand? Andy Cole? Eh, Mikael Silvestre?
Feel free to let us know in the comments box below but rightly or wrongly, we can’t wait to tune into the documentary later on tonight.
Roy Keane’s best Manchester United XI: Peter Schmeichel; Paul Parker, Jaap Stam, Gary Pallister, Denis Irwin; Paul Ince, Roy Keane, David Beckham, Eric Cantona, Cristiano Ronaldo, Ruud van Nistelrooy
