Former Manchester United star Roy Keane reveals brawl with Peter Schmeichel in autobiography

FORMER Manchester United captain Roy Keane has revealed he once left teammate Peter Schmeichel with a black eye following a pre-season brawl.

Explosive revelations: Keane dishes dirt

FORMER Manchester United captain Roy Keane has revealed he once left teammate Peter Schmeichel with a black eye following a pre-season brawl, in extracts from his autobiography.

In the book, The Second Half, the former Ireland midfielder also lifts the lid on his acrimonious departure from United in 2005, a showdown with former Arsenal star Patrick Vieira and criticises Rio Ferdinand over his missed drugs test.

Keane reveals that the alcohol-fuelled fight with former Denmark international Schmeichel, one of United’s greatest ever goalkeepers, occurred during a pre-season trip to Hong Kong in 1998.

Roy Keane is now the Aston Villa assistant manager.

“There’d been a little bit of tension between us over the years, for football reasons,” wrote Keane, in an excerpt from the book published on the website of British newspaper the Daily Mirror.

“He said, ‘I’ve had enough of you. It’s time we sorted this out.’ So I said, ‘OK,’ and we had a fight.

“I woke up the next morning. I kind of vaguely remembered the fight. My hand was really sore and one of my fingers was bent backwards.”

According to Keane, Schmeichel explained away his black eye at a subsequent press conference by claiming that one of his team-mates had accidentally elbowed him in training.

Keane left United in November 2005 after launching a withering attack on some of his teammates during an interview with United’s in-house television channel, MUTV, that was never broadcast.

In his book, he says that he learnt of United’s desire for him to leave during a subsequent meeting with then manager Alex Ferguson.

Roy Keane and Peter Schmeichel in trophy-winning days.

“I said to Ferguson, ‘Can I play for somebody else?’” writes Keane, who is now working as an assistant coach for Aston Villa and the Irish national team.

“And he said, ‘Yeah you can, because we’re tearing up your contract’.”

On the eight-month suspension that Ferdinand received in 2004 for missing a drugs test, Keane writes: “He suffered for it and so did the team.

“If it had been me, and the doctor had said I had to do a drugs test, I’d have gone and done it. It wasn’t something I’d have forgotten.”

In other extracts from the book:

ON LOSING HIS RAG WITH PATRICK VIEIRA: “I’d thought they might have booted him (Gary Neville) out on the pitch. But in the tunnel? I just thought ‘The f******’. They were trying to bully him. They were a big team and, in the tunnel, they were even bigger. So I said to myself ‘Alright, let’s go’.

ON APOLOGISING TO SIR ALEX FERGUSON: “I went to see the manager and Carlos and I apologised. But now I kind of wish I hadn’t. I apologised but afterwards I was thinking ‘I’m not sure why I f****** apologised’. I just wanted to do the right thing. I was apologising for what had happened – that it had happened. But I wasn’t apologising for my behaviour or stance. There’s a difference. I had nothing to apologise for.”

ON THE DEMISE OF DAVID MOYES: “If some of the players weren’t 100 per cent behind the manager, then they all slackened off. You can have personality clashes, dips in form; you can have injury crises; or the club can be going through a transitional period – but you still go out and do your best. I don’t think all of the United players went out and did that. They can’t have because they ended the season so far adrift of the top. I watched them play and I always thought ‘You can do better’.”

ON THE END AT UNITED: “My leaving the club, the way I look at it now, it was definitely for the benefit of Manchester United. If the manager and Carlos felt that I was up to whatever they thought I was up to, if there was that awkwardness, then it was best for everybody that I go. And let me suffer the consequences. Let me cry in my car for two minutes. If it benefited Manchester United, so be it.”

Originally published as Former Manchester United star Roy Keane reveals brawl with Peter Schmeichel in autobiography