Cascarino too Keane to criticise

I have a soft spot for Keane, much as he himself could once discover anyone's softer parts. In these pages I expressed the hope, a while back, that old Psycho would prove us all wrong about teams and management, players and desire. Not this week.

But give the boy the part, at least, of a small break. He said he would quit and go if "Roy Keane" was the problem, not the answer, on Wearside. He was not about to quibble with bustling Niall Quinn (not again). If you fail and wake up looking at yourself you have failed utterly, or so he said. And he was as good as his terse word.

Then enter Mr Cascarino, for all the world a basic corporate media type who once played a bit, with a small poisoned dagger. "He's taken the easy option. He's not rolled up his sleeves. And even" - who could fail to admire a Borgia job? - "with as much courage as Roy Keane says he's got, this is the end for him."

Really? We don't do expletives on this paper. Still, who in the fund-amental, and - let's be basic - the f***, is Tony Cascarino? I can remember a little. He never quite got around to driving Manchester United towards a European title single-handedly. Correct?

Does the fact that Keane called out a whole national association over certain World Cup arrangements still rankle? I said then - I'll say it again - that he was right. The reason that the best players are the best players is that they will not succumb to nonsense: hence Keane. Hence "Mick" McCarthy.

Was it an offence, then, to the blessed Niall? Mr Quinn got over it, when last I heard, after the invest-ors spoke up. So was it a failure to appreciate Mr Cascarino's invaluable contributions to the old country's cause? Anything is possible, but some things are laughable.

Unless his press employers have all the quotes wrong, however, it would appear that a formerly average Irish player has passed a sentence on Roy Keane's management career. To wit: "No one will give him the opport-unity to manage a football club because they won't trust him."

That is, in my guess, an extra-ordinary statement. I am not lawyer enough to worry over defamation. It touches, though, on competence, and then on probity. "Trust"? We are still talking about miserable old Sunderland, right?

Keane spent a bundle of money and won too few games: that, people, is the sport. He, irrespective of the Murdoch press, never shirked the task, or asked for an excuse: done decently, that too is the sport. Punditry, as one is forced to call it, has a certain relevance in these events. Mr Cascarino seems confused in these matters.

Keane quit after failing to restore a football club to its former imagined eminence. He will not, I think, starve as a result. But will he, should he, "not manage again"? I write about football because I am asked, not because I know much. Mr Cascarino thinks he knows. There is a difference.

The judgment being passed on Keane is moral. They say he walks away, always, that he ducks and runs, or heads for cover when things do not appeal to that almighty Irish ego. A bloke from The Times, once a middling player for the Republic of Ireland, who might not care for the Keano PR machine, says as much. Arsene Wenger says otherwise.

I used to read certain old French philosophers, once upon a time. Camus in goal, as always, and Voltaire as a nippy midfield general. Wenger is not one of those, but he'll do. Unlike a Murdoch hack, Arsene says of Keane: "He is a passionate man, and I regret that he leaves the job." Precisely.

What football do you get when there are no Roy Keanes? What remains when no man is left standing to refuse the insult, or the tackle? Niall Quinn, and the clever corporate types? Not in my world, I hope.

Mark Hughes, who has problems of his own to seek, said Keane is "a straight guy". That is not trivial. Sir Alex Ferguson meanwhile wondered whether his old captain would ever return to the game. That might be a comment on the game itself.

Think it through: if capitalism collapses, finally, why are we watching St Mirren, or Hibs, or Chelsea? On the other hand, why are we not? What is football, in these times? Just the old peasant distraction?

Roy Keane proposed the notion that this is a sport for big, ugly Irish types who set about their endeavours with some honest intent. He quit when he failed, spectacularly, to establish the point. Sunderland will no doubt hire a tiresome thuggish corporate blowhard to re-establish sound business principles.

England's Premier League can buy all the talent it needs. Wenger, or Big Phil Scolari, can meanwhile act as a reminder of the sport's original intent. But if Keane is lost, something of the game in these islands is gone for good. Then we go, rhetorically, after the hacks who once played a bit for the other islands.

I never thought much of Tony Cascarino, to be honest. I half-heard, once or twice, that he deplored Keane. Then I heard that the Great One did not give an expletive.

But in Ireland - one of those small, north-European countries you may have seen on a map - everyone called it sport.

So here's your wind-up, and a gift for my reduced-stature chums on the comical papers: Keano for Parkhead? Why not?

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