‘Roy Keane was the one player every country at the World Cup would have picked from our squad, so I do wonder what we could have achieved had he stayed in 2002’ Matt Holland opens up on Ireland’s Saipan bust-up

Roy Keane, Mick McCarthy.

More than two decades on, the Republic of Ireland’s 2002 World Cup campaign remains one of the most explosive and fascinating chapters in the nation’s footballing history.

The high-profile fallout between manager Mick McCarthy and captain Roy Keane was headline news at the time and continues to captivate to this day, with a movie on the bust-up being released last year.