Memorable moments: Roy Keane’s brutal tackle ends Haaland’s career

Roy Keane is a great Manchester United icon. A legend, a beloved heartthrob and a leader. But he has never been popular in opposing camps. He crowned his hard play in 2001 against Manchester City.

Memorable Moments is a special project by Ruiku that commemorates the most iconic moments that have happened in football. Today, we look back at Roy Keane’s crazy foul.

Keane never went far for a foul. Whenever the game needed to be tightened up, the Irish midfielder didn’t hesitate twice.

He spent 12 years at Manchester United, racking up 472 games. He scored 51 goals, but he is remembered for his hard play and his intervention on Alf-Inge Haaland, which is not often seen.

To understand the reason why Keane decided to make the brutal intervention, we have to go back to 1997 and the match between Manchester United and Leeds. Keane actually tore the cruciate ligament in his knee, whereupon Alf-Inge laughed in his face. The Irish midfielder missed a whole year to recover.

In April 2001 came the Manchester derby and Keane’s revenge. The Manchester United captain peed on his former Nottingham teammate and brutally stamped on his knee.

There is much talk that Keane ended Haaland’s career with this tackle. That’s not entirely true, the Norwegian footballer still played in a friendly for Norway afterwards, he didn’t undergo surgery until the summer and on his other knee.

However, Haaland takes it as a career ending. “The knee still hurts, the pain won’t go away, I have to accept that. Did the surgery end my career? Well, I haven’t played a full game since then. That doesn’t seem like a coincidence, does it?” he told the Daily Mail two years later.

He even considered suing Keane for lost profits, but ultimately took no legal action.

Keane and Haaland never spoke again. Norwegian television tried to bring the two actors in the 21-year-old incident together before the Manchester derby in October, where Alf-Inge’s son destroyed the Red Devils with a hat-trick, but failed.

Source: Twitter, Mirror