Roy Keane couldn’t help himself. When launching another damning tirade on the mess behind the scenes at Manchester United, the former club captain pointed to the continued presence of legendary manager Sir Alex Ferguson as “a bad smell” hanging over each one of his successors.
Keane and Ferguson famously fell out two decades ago. The tension cranked up during a training camp ahead of the 2005–06 season and peaked when the ex-midfielder delivered a scathing review of his teammates’ performance in a 4–1 defeat to Middlesbrough for the club’s in-house broadcaster. Keane was fined £5,000 ($6,700) and left the club by mutual consent the following month.
