Richard Keys gets reaction from Ruud Gullit with awkward comment

05 March 2024 , 20:26

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Ruud Gullit burst out laughing as Richard Keys stared at him (Image: beIN SPORTS)

Richard Keys sparked a reaction from Ruud Gullit with his suggestive comment about managers falling out with star players.

Gullit infamously fell out with Alan Shearer when he was Newcastle manager after the Dutchman dropped the England international for the 1999 Tyne-Wear derby with Sunderland.

Shearer only found out he'd been dropped when he saw his name missing from the team sheet and after Sunderland ran out 2-1 winners, the striker confronted his boss in his office the next day.

The defeat ultimately cost Gullit his job and both manager and player have discussed the decision to drop Shearer and the public spat between them in the following years.

Speaking on beIN SPORTS this Tuesday, Keys was making a point about managers and players when he directed a comment at Gullit. He said: "We've seen it many, many times through the years.

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"If a coach falls out with a star player then he is toast, isn't he?" The comment sparked a response from Andy Gray, who began: "Well, the star player is not going anywhere..."

But the Scotsman was cut off by the sound of Gullit laughing. While doing so, he said: "You (Keys) cannot stop laughing. He is looking at me." He added: "The only certainty you have as a coach is that you're going to get sacked."

Duncan Ferguson, Ruud Gullit and Alan Shearer at Newcastle (PA)

Shearer revisited being dropped for the derby in 2021, and claimed that had the man who replaced him on the day, Paul Robinson, enjoyed the game of his life against Sunderland, it would have been him leaving Newcastle in the days that followed - not Gullit.

"I don't have any doubt about what would have happened if Newcastle, not Sunderland, had been victorious on August 25, 1999," he wrote in The Athletic.

"It was all laden with symbolism: Paul, a young, promising, boyhood Sunderland fan replacing me for one of our biggest games of the season, in parochial terms at least.

"We took the lead but Sunderland won and Gullit was toast. If it had gone the other way, Gullit would have stayed and I would have left; God knows where to.

"I would not be Newcastle's record goalscorer today and I would not have a statue, right arm raised to the sky, on Barrack Road beside the stadium."

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Jake Polden