Rio Ferdinand recalls Roy Keane’s infamous row with Alex Ferguson

Former Ireland captain Keane gave an infamous interview with MUTV 18 years ago in which he criticized a number of his Red Devils teammates, including Ferdinand, John O’Shea, Alan Smith, Kieran Richardson and Darren Fletcher, and even took shots at his manager .

The interview was never shown after Alex Ferguson was infuriated by Keane’s analysis and invited his captain to showdown talks with the club’s chief executive David Gill.

Keane stormed out of the chat after being told that his current contract, which had only months left to run anyway, would be paid off and that he would never play for Man United again.

Keane is said to have said to Ferdinand: “Just because you get paid £120,000 a week and play well against Tottenham for 20 minutes, you think you’re a superstar.”

Ferdinand spoke on his YouTube channel FIVE and explained: “We play a game on a Saturday, a player is nominated on MUTV to do an analysis of that game. We are beaten by Middlesbrough, everyone is playing nonsense. Roy Keane does the video analysis and destroys the whole team, including me. He goes through people one by one, hammers them.

“The manager gets wind of it before it goes out, cancels the broadcast and says it’s not going out anywhere, that’s a shame, that can’t happen.”

“I call a meeting at the training ground, we all go to the manager’s office, have a look and the manager leaves. It’s a film in itself, everyone shudders. The manager says: ‘How dare you, I’m the only one who should speak publicly about our players?'”

“Roy has a chance, it starts again between the coach and Roy, said some crazy things.

“The next day we start training the manager calls a meeting as we go onto the training pitch and says, just so you know, Roy Keane will never play for this football club again.”

Keane’s departure to Celtic was confirmed two weeks later.

When asked about the message Ferguson’s decision sent, Ferdinand added: “Shiver me Timbers.” Don’t mess with this guy, don’t mess with Sir Alex. This guy is the truth. This guy is the coldest guy ever.

“This is our captain, this is a legend of the football club, a phenomenal player, a great guy to have around when the going gets tough. You know you can look to the right and go, Roy, where do we go now?” ?

“The manager says if I’m not on guard this won’t happen. My husband is finished, he is finished. He does that, he’ll never wear that gear again, he looks around and suddenly he says, “Let’s go and train.”

“I know some of the men’s legs were flaky on the way there afterwards, like spaghetti on the way to the training ground because Sir Alex Ferguson has a cold, you have to be cold in situations like that.”