Widely regarded as the hardest man to ever play football in the modern day, it perhaps won't come as a surprise to learn that Roy Keane was a young apprentice boxer before discovering his true calling as a footballer. Signed from Nottingham Forest in 1993, Keane shunned a then-dominant Blackburn Rovers to join us and has been rewarded with cult-hero status ever since. The Irishman was the complete midfielder at the height of his powers, and was nearly single-handedly responsible for our dominance of English football in the 1990s. But he also had a darker side to him. The infamous, career-threatening tackle on Alf-Inge Haland is a regrettable footnote of what was otherwise a distinguished career, with Keane 'taking revenge' on the Norwegian with a knee high lunge after being accused of feigning injury. Keane's talk was also as tough as any tackle. He constantly rounded on his own teammates if he thought they weren't pulling their weight, just ask Rio Ferdinand and Darren Fletcher. But what Keane will be best remembered for is his legendary rivalry with Arsenal's Patrick Vieira. Their televised spat in the tunnel prior to a typically fiery encounter between the two sides is one of the most iconic moments from the Premier League era, with Keane spitting "I'll see you out there!" after taking issue with something Vierra had said. And it is incidents such as these (and they were numerous) that rightly make Roy Keane the hardest man who has ever played for Manchester United.
Joseph is an accredited football journalist and has interviewed nearly all of the current 20 Barclay's Premier League managers. He is also a correspondent for Bleacher Report and has written for Caught Offside and Give Me Football.
