Roy Keane is talking with Mick McCarthy before the 2002 World Cup, and one of them is being gallingly intransigent. It isn’t, this time, the player.
Keane had gone to McCarthy a few weeks before the tournament and asked if could he bring Manchester United’s power development trainer, Mick Clegg, to Japan. The midfielder had struck up a strong working relationship with Clegg, having credited him with honing his own impossibly high fitness, as well as the very mindset of the United team. Keane felt Clegg’s approach was so distinctive that he could help develop Ireland into a “small SAS unit” ready to “strike fear”, the sort of approach that is generally hugely effective in cup competitions.
