“Describe Patrick Vieira, the opponent,” Roy Keane is asked in the film Best of Enemies, about the rivalry between his Manchester United side and Vieira's Arsenal.
“Very, very, very, very tough.”
“What was his biggest strength?”
“He was tough.”
“What was his biggest weakness?”
“I don't think he was as tough as me.”
It is classic Keane: ruthless and competitive to the point that it verges on self-parody. For years, the Man United captain and midfielder earned a reputation for tireless commitment and furious aggression. Now, as a pundit, his ice-cold gaze and florid rants have made him something of an icon among fans who think the game – and modern life – is going soft.
As a pundit, Keane has two valuable assets. The first is that “last thing you see alive” stare – the kind of stare a low-ranking mafioso might face if he annoys the boss. His eyes, somehow, are transformed into a darker shade of black. His iron features harden into steel. Someone who makes crime films should hire this man - or, perhaps, horror films.
His second asset is that he is funny. “Liverpool have beaten nobody yet.” “They’ve beaten Arsenal.” “That’s what I mean.” When you are effectively a professional loudmouth, being funny excuses a lot.
Clips of Keane's tirades – featuring his insistence that he would be “swinging punches” at Man United goalkeeper David De Gea (“I wouldn’t let him on the bus, get a taxi back to Manchester”) – attract millions of viewers on YouTube, and admiring comments like “totally sees it and says it like it is” and “Roy has no filter, we need more people like him.” “Shock jocks” are popular because they are funny but also because they appear authentic amid stage-managed bullshit.
The success of Keane clips has been illustrated by ITV, which employed him for several years in past, releasing a three-part series called “Roy Keane's BEST moments” as if it is a boxer's highlight reel. (“ITV milking Roy Keane like a cow in a barn,” says one commenter.) A semi-ironic variation on the old “Chuck Norris” meme has developed, inspiring jokes like “Roy Keane gets up at 5am every morning to wake his alarm clock up” and “When Roy Keane moved out of his parents' house, he sat his father down and said, “You’re the man of the house now.””
Of course, the man's cantankerousness is something of an act. With a comic's timing, he plays up to and exceeds his image. Did De Gea not make a fine, important save? “That’s his job,” says Keane, before adding, “He should have caught it.” Immediately, his admirers were posting comments like, “Roy Keane's Mum: “I love you Roy.” Roy Keane: “Well, that’s your job.”” Keane knows what his role is and plays it to perfection. It's his job.
Still, being an exaggerated version of yourself does not mean you are not being yourself. Keane's dedication and perfectionism are real and helped to inspire Man United throughout their glory years. “If training starts at half past ten and a player is coming in at twenty past ten,” Keane wrote in his bestselling book The Second Half, “I would class that as being late.”
His aggression was real as well. Sometimes it came to the detriment of his will to win and support his side, such as in his sickening knee-high lunge at Alf-Inge Håland or his rather comical attempt to pick a fight with the towering Alan Shearer, both of which got him sent off. At other times, though, like his famous slanging match with Vieira over the Arsenal captain's intimidation of Neville, his ferocity helped his side, and its supporters, to straighten their backs in the knowledge that he was behind them. Undeniably, it also added to the excitement. One invests more emotion in a contest the more that its contestants seem to care about it.
One cannot equate hostility and competitiveness. As far as I know, Roger Federer, Raphael Nadal and Novak Djokovic have always been polite to one another and their three-way rivalry has made the past two decades a golden age of tennis. Nor should one equate, as some of Keane's laddish admirers do, being young, well-groomed and fond of the odd selfie with a lack of motivation. Cristiano Ronaldo is the living embodiment of the term “pretty boy” but even Keane will tell you he is not “more worried about the mirror than his game.” Finally, being soft and being competitive often goes hand-in-hand. Do football players roll around as if they have been maced when their opponents brush the air in front of them because they are snowflakes or because they want to win?
So, just as there is something cartoonish about the man's public image, there is something a bit silly about the nostalgia of the cult of Keane. But one can admit that and still bask in the man's outrage at underperforming players taking time out of their training schedules to launch clothing brands, and at teams hugging and high-fiving opponents before kick-off, and at fantastically expensive and fantastically well-paid young men wilting under pressure. Hunter Davies, the prolific writer on music and football, has written:
...watching a pathetic Spurs collapse, or England struggling against modest opposition, it is clear many don’t know how to cope. They are waiting to be told, for others to do it for them, wipe their noses, pull up their socks.
Keane’s gruff, steely persona is especially striking in a time where competitiveness is problematized as a feature of “toxic masculinity”. Certainly, it sometimes seems as if he is attempting to squeeze himself into the caveman mould, such as when he took a jab at veteran forward John Walters for crying in public after losing his brother and unborn child. But there is still something bracing about his fierce expectation of professional excellence – and his desire to win.
The American Psychological Association suggests, “traditional masculinity—marked by stoicism, competitiveness, dominance and aggression—is, on the whole, harmful.” It can be. We have all known or heard of the man who stubbornly refuses to visit a doctor, or the man who wants to fight because he loses at pool. On a more systematic level, an excess of competition can be damaging in, for example, science, when skewed incentives lead researchers scramble to publish findings or, on the other hand, to conceal their data.
But there is no point in being naïve about human nature. From Newton to Edison, great men of modernity have had big egos and mile-wide competitive streaks which have driven them to new discoveries and achievements. In one study, Jennifer Epstein and Judith Harackiewicz found that competition “enhanced intrinsic interest for achievement-oriented individuals”. Do others thrive on cooperation? Absolutely! There is no such thing as one model for human success. But neither approach is wrong, they are just different.
Nor does it make sense to pretend that competitiveness is not inherently thrilling. People do not just talk about Ali/Frazier fifty years after it took place because it was a masterful display of the sweet science but because both men would have tap danced on nails to win. Is there something absurd about that? Maybe. But that’s life.
Ultimately, the value of traits like competitiveness depends on how they are channelled. Keane's scrap with Vieira has gone down in sporting legend. What could be forgotten is that it spurred the Irishman on to a match-winning performance, as Man United won 4-2. Then, at least, his inner fury summoned up greatness, not just belligerence. As Vieira says in Best of Enemies, it inspired Arsenal to work as hard as possible as well. So, perhaps competition and cooperation are not as antonymous as they seem. Under the right conditions, bitter rivals can help each other to seal their places in the history books.