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It’s one of the most brutal tackles in football history – but Roy Keane doesn’t think it was that bad.
The Manchester United hardman infamously floored Alf-Inge Haaland – father of Erling – in a Manchester derby in 2001 and even stood over the Norwegian, taunting his victim after being given his marching orders by the referee. But according to Keane, the challenge looked worse than it was, and he even blames Gary Neville for his red card.
During the latest edition of The Overlap, Keane was asked to justify the 13 red cards he received in his career. That one against Manchester City was the most memorable. However, had it not been for Neville’s intervention straight after the tackle, the Irishman reckons he could have stayed on the pitch.
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“You didn’t help either,” says Keane. A mystified Neville replies: “I didn’t help with what?” Keane then explains: “Running off to the linesman saying it’s only a yellow. When you say that to the official they’ll think ‘it must be a red’.
As the other panellists Ian Wright and Jill Scott chuckled away, a laughing Neville added: “So I’m at fault for you being sent off?”
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Keane then insists: “I don’t think that tackle was that bad, I really don’t. I know it looks bad but when a player does a summersault…”
When Neville points out that the challenge was “knee-high”, Keane continues: “I was never going to injure him in that type of tackle. If you play the game, you know when a player is trying to injure a player. It’s just when someone does a summersault, it kind of looks worse than it is.
“And it was a City game, it was a rubbish game. We were all frustrated, I think we’d just been knocked out of Europe a couple days earlier.”
Keane and Haaland had history after Keane suffered a knee injury during a match against Haaland’s then-club, Leeds. The former Sunderland and Ipswich boss adds: “I’d done my cruciate up at Leeds. I tried to trip him [Haaland] and he was stood over me, it was a bad injury and he was saying some nasty things. And I just thought, ‘we meet again’.”
- Gary Neville
- Premier League
- Roy Keane
- Manchester United FC
- Manchester City FC
- Erling Haaland
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