07 February 2024 , 10:53
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Roy Keane has admitted he was heartbroken to miss Manchester United’s famous Champions League final win over Bayern Munich in 1999.
United won the Treble in the 1998/99 season, with Sir Alex Ferguson ’s side claiming the Premier League, FA Cup and Champions League trophies. It was an impressive achievement that has gone down in the club’s history and made the squad revered by fans.
Keane was captain of the team and played in the 2-0 win over Newcastle in the FA Cup final on May 22, but like Paul Scholes, was unable to take the field four days later in Barcelona. The Republic of Ireland international was injured at Wembley, so might have been unavailable anyway, but he still felt the pain of missing the iconic match, which saw United score twice in added time to come from behind and beat Bayern 2-1.
Asked on the Stick to Football podcast whether he had a sinking feeling about missing the game, Keane replied: “Yes, you do. The standard answer when people ask you is, ‘That’s life,’ but it’s heartbreaking when you miss a big game like that.
“Your mindset at the time is that you’re United, competing, and you’re convinced that you’ll get back to another final, but you don’t. Scholesy did eventually get back to another one, I didn’t, and that’s the reality and brutal side of the game. You can’t be suspended now [for a final], just my luck that.”
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Keane travelled with the squad to Barcelona and was there to witness his team making history thanks to Teddy Sheringham’s equaliser and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer ’s winner. But he allowed stand-in skipper Peter Schmeichel to lift the trophy, insisting he wouldn’t feel comfortable doing so himself after not playing.
“No, I don’t agree with that,” he explained. “I’m not against other people doing it, but at the time I would have been really embarrassed, cringing to be honest. We went down at the end, me and Scholesy, but that was late into it and even then, I was thinking, ‘really,’ cringing.”
Roy Keane wasn't involved in Manchester United's win over Bayern Munich in the 1999 Champions League final (John Peters/Manchester United via Getty Images)Gary Neville played in the Champions League final for United and thinks the win was even more special because of absences of Keane and Scholes, who was also suspended. He said: “We only found out a couple of weeks before that Roy and Scholes couldn’t play but because all the games we had left were the FA Cup final and last game of the season, we couldn’t practise with the team, we had no games in hand to work with.”
Neville felt the team “were all over the place” towards the end while chasing the game, with Ferguson throwing on reinforcements in search of a goal. Ryan Giggs and David Beckham were among those forced to play out of position due to Keane and Scholes not being available.
“Giggsy was playing on the right that night, for 75 minutes – I never played with Giggsy [down the right side] in my life, and he’d never played with me,” he explained. “Yorke was upfront with Coley (Andy Cole), Jesper [Blomqvist] was on the left and Becks was in central midfield.”