Former Sunderland defender Clarke nearly died after collapsing
during a game but Keane admits he merely dismissed the
tragedy.
In his first interview since walking out on Sunderland, Irish
superstar Keane also:
But it is Keane’s attack on Clarke which is most
shocking.
Clarke was forced to quit football after suffering a massive
heart attack during a Carling Cup tie against Nottingham Forest in
August 2007 while on loan at Leicester.
The left-back collapsed unconscious in the changing room at
half-time following TWO heart failures. His heart
stopped beating for FOUR minutes and his life was
only saved by desperate paramedics.
He was then rushed to hospital in Nottingham where he spent 10
days recovering after being fitted with a pacemaker.
Clarke, 29, left Sunderland on medical grounds 12 months
ago and has not played since. But Keane shows not an ounce of
sympathy towards his fellow Irishman, recalling: “On a night we got
beaten in the cup by Luton, the staff came in and said, ‘Clive
Clarke has had a heart attack at
Leicester’.
“I said, ‘Is he OK? I’m shocked they found one, you could never
tell by the way he plays’. “Clarke later goes and does a piece in
some newspaper telling the world that I have lost the dressing
room. How does he know? He wasn’t there! Clown.”
But Keane’s bitter attack on Clarke doesn’t stop there. He
added: “We went back to Stoke and Clive had been there as a player.
I swear he actually thought he was Stanley Matthews coming back to
them.
"He was kissing everybody. He got back on the bus with presents
for his baby, delighted with himself.”
Keane is no stranger to tirades. He was fined a record £150,000
by the FA in October 2002 after confessing in his book he
deliberately tried to injure Manchester City’s Alf Inge Haaland in
a tackle that wrecked his knee.
And the 37-year-old continued his latest blast by giving
Sunderland’s Texan owner Short both barrels. Short took advantage
of a share issue to raise more than £30m and make him the largest
single stakeholder last September. But a phone call from Short
triggered Keane’s decision to quit on December 4.
Keane, replaced by assistant Ricky Sbragia, insists he was
plagued with questions over his refusal to move to the area and the
days he missed training.
In an interview in the Irish Times, he declared: “When I became
a manager, Niall Quinn became a chairman. I always believed we were
working together, not one working for the other. It worked well, I
couldn’t have faked that.
“The club’s owners — the Drumaville consortium — were spot on
and it worked. I was more comfortable with Drumaville. I never saw
them after matches but they stuck to what agreement we had. They’d
fly in, watch the games and get a flight back home to Ireland.
“With Short, Niall and I had sat down with him a couple
of times and I went to London to meet him twice. I thought, hmm,
the dynamics are changing here. He said he had read my
book.
"And I felt he was thinking from the start that I wasn’t for
him. He knew this wasn’t going to be a long-term
relationship.”
It was Keane’s reluctance to take Short’s phone calls after a
4-1 defeat by Bolton that was the final straw. When he did return
the call, a parting of the ways was inevitable.
Keane added: “It started with a demand to know where I had been
the previous day, he wanted me available at all times. “It was only
the second day in my career as a manager that I had ignored calls.
It was disappointment. Same as after the Everton game when we lost
7-1.
“Then there were accusations about how often I came in, about
moving my family to Sunderland. And it was the tone. I couldn’t
give my heart and soul with this fella on my shoulder. “So I rang
my lawyer Michael Kennedy and said, ‘Michael, speak with whoever
you have to. I’m done with Sunderland’.”
Keane was also done with players he signed simply to make up the
numbers as Sunderland battled for Premier League survival. And he
was done with watching them “take the p***” out of the club by
thinking of little else but money.
He said: “I had one player asking who else I was signing. I
should have told him there and then to get out of my office. But I
signed him. We needed bodies. “He got a contract for too much. You
learn. If the word about a player is he is bad news, well, then he
will be bad news. “But when we were promoted from the Championship
we had 13 or 14 players starting in the Premier League.
“You’ll sign anybody who will play. I would be giving contracts
to players I didn’t rate that highly. I needed the
bodies!”
Keane’s decision to bring in former Manchester United team-mate
Dwight Yorke surprised many. And Keane accused him of using
international trips to Trinidad and Tobago as a chance to take
extra time off.
Keane claimed: “One day I get Yorkie texting me from an
international game asking can he miss a league match the following
week because he has business to take care of. I said,
‘No’!”
Keane also reveals how one player was upset at being dropped not
because he was missing a chance to shine but because of the
appearance bonus. Keane added: “He’s on £25,000 or £35,000 a week
and he is upset, not about missing out, but about the appearance
cheque. Jesus!”
But Keane dismisses the idea he was too strict. He said: “I
rolled with things. I had the police come to the training pitch and
had to go off with them for one of the players. Christmas parties
etc, things got out of hand and I sorted it.
“Three players were caught on video one night with a girl. I had
to go and sort it out. “I wanted one to play the next game. We
needed him. Niall and the board overruled me and I took their
opinion on board.” But he does believe his coaching staff
undermined him at times by being too soft with players when he was
not around.
He insisted: “On the days when I was there I would step in and
pep things up but sometimes afterwards I would think the staff
should really be catching this.
“In an ideal world, if a player comes to complain to a staff
member, and they do because footballers can be moody b******s, you
want the staff member saying, ‘Look, keep your head down, shut up
and get on with it in training’. You can’t be saying, ‘I’d have you
in my team’.”
Despite all the frustration and pent-up anger, Keane does intend
to make his comeback soon. He said: “Alex Ferguson comes out and
says, ‘You never know what he is going to do next.’
“What did he think I was going to do? Go backpacking around
Mexico? I have five kids. Football is in my blood, I’d just had
enough at Sunderland. Things had changed. End of bloody story.”