THE STORY of Manchester United’s remarkable treble season is also the story of Roy Keane and Alex Ferguson.
Arguably no two figures did more for the club during their most successful era and 1999 was probably the year in which both were at the absolute peak of their powers.
No English team had won the treble of the Premier League, FA Cup and Champions League in the same season before then, and despite the increasing concentration of great players into a select few teams, the feat has not been matched since by a men’s team in the UK.
Matt Dickinson, the Senior Sports Writer for The Times, was there to witness it all close-up and has just published a book, ‘Manchester United, the Treble and All That,’ about those halcyon days for the Red Devils.
It was very much a different time both for football and sports journalism.
“Because of the nature of reporting in the ’90s, I was able to get reasonably close, certainly closer than might be possible now to really mixing with the David Beckhams, Gary Nevilles, and Roy, when we could get close to him, and Peter Schmeichel, Yorke, Cole etc,” he tells The42.
“And I had the ability to be able to get hold of them and reflect on it again. I just think it’s such an extraordinary cocktail of characters in that dressing room, which I was fascinated by and actually going back to the story, and reliving it all again, was even more struck by this dressing room of alpha males and the tensions within it.
“And then we have this simplistic idea that great success must be based on this team spirit. And, everyone must have been pulling in the right direction. And I hope the book shows that actually, life in a dressing room can be much more complicated than that.
“I was lucky in the sense of having been based up in Manchester for a chunk of the ’90s and I helped David Beckham do one of his books, I helped Gary Neville do his autobiography.
“So I had certain ins and it was a different time. As I write in the book — the fact that we could sort of skulk around the training ground as reporters. We had Alex Ferguson’s home number, and it feels nuts thinking about it now, but, we could literally ring Alex Ferguson at home and ask him about Ryan Giggs’ hamstring. That seems pretty much unthinkable now, but it was the pre-internet, pre-social media era. Half a dozen of us were on that beat, and we all had our own different intimate relationships with Ferguson and for better, or worse, the players.”
Yet initially, United looked in danger of dramatically imploding before the season began.
At the outset of the 1998-99 campaign, Ferguson was experiencing one of the more vulnerable points of his 26 years in charge at Man United.
The previous season had seen Arsenal do the double, while it was one of the rare occasions under Ferguson where the Red Devils finished the season without a major trophy.
Arsene Wenger had only recently arrived on the scene and revolutionised the English game with a number of highly innovative ideas in the process. Ferguson was in danger of being permanently overtaken by the Gunners’ boss and his new exciting style. Doubts were even beginning to creep into the Old Trafford hierarchy.
As a result, the board brought in Ferguson for questioning before the season started. They told the manager they were worried he was losing his focus, hinted his passion as a racehorse owner was too big a distraction and that he was leaving too many training sessions to his assistant, Brian Kidd. In addition, several of Ferguson’s recent signs, including Henning Berg, Jordi Cruyff, and Karel Poborsky had struggled to convince since their respective arrivals.
The row became increasingly heated and culminated with Ferguson saying he had no option but to resign. Chairman Martin Edwards, sensing it was not a serious threat, called his bluff and accepted the offer. Later that day, Ferguson called and confirmed he was in fact staying.
“I sat in Martin Edwards’ house and he actually has the paperwork still,” Dickinson says.
“I don’t think they had any intention of getting rid of him, but the fact that they wrote down their reservations and that they actually hauled him back from holiday for a finger-jabbing session [was surprising].
“Typical Ferguson, you prod the hornet’s nest, and he erupts. I don’t think he was ever going to walk partly because this was his life’s work. He was building a team and refreshing that team, but I think he was getting other offers, and he did feel underpaid. And it was tense, there’s no doubt about it. It’s the chairman of the club saying ‘pull your socks up’ and him saying: ‘Fuck you. How dare you question me?’
“So there was certainly a lot of tension, that’s for sure. And Martin Edwards is unapologetic about that. He says it’s not my job to be mates with Alex Ferguson, it was my job to do the best for Man United. And if that meant upsetting the manager, then so be it.”
Ferguson was far from the only character at Old Trafford back then prone to furious explosions of anger.
Roy Keane was widely seen as the personification of his manager on the pitch and ensured standards remained high off it too.
Perhaps because he was not quite as spectacular as the likes of Paul Scholes, Frank Lampard, or Steven Gerrard, you often notice the Cork star’s name omitted from various ‘greatest ever’ Premier League teams, but even more so than through his considerable ability, it was his influence and presence that drove Manchester United to unprecedented levels of success.
Dickinson agrees: “I think it is still one of the great, underrated seasons. I think he is madly underrated. To put it in a broader context, when I set out with the project of the book, David Beckham is a key figure in it, he still bookends it in the sense of his year of redemption from the dismissal of the 1998 World Cup, and the low that he was into, obviously, the glory at the end, and his marriage to Posh Spice.
“So one of the original narrative arcs was the Beckham story, but I would say that almost was overtaken, the more I looked into it, by the Keane thread through it.
“I wouldn’t say none of it happens without Roy Keane, but we can see what happens the year before when Keane was injured for most of the season — United slumped and Arsenal took over. And I think that absolutely can’t be underlined enough.
“How important to what is achieved that year is not only the fact that Keane is back, but it’s a different Keane, who is back. Someone who spent nine months battling with this knee injury, someone who suddenly felt: ‘Christ, this career is fragile,’ for the first time and came back, head shaved, leaner than ever, meaner than ever, more driven than ever.”
Yet Keane was far from the most popular figure at Old Trafford. His abrasive style alienated some players to a degree. A Teddy Sheringham story recounted in the book is a case in point — a drink-fuelled row in 1998 saw the pair almost come to blows and supposedly led to them not speaking again at all for the remainder of the striker’s time at the club. Although despite this fracas, the former England international still appreciates how the Corkonian’s immense influence permeated and even shaped the club to an extent.
“Teddy Sheringham says: ‘Literally every training session was different if Keane was or wasn’t there.’ That was the impact he had. The whole building knew if Roy Keane was there and he arrives back for that season. The armband has to be ripped off Peter Schmeichel, Keane grabs it back and drives that operation.
“Obviously, he and Ferguson fall out in the end, but I think 1998-99 is when Keane more than ever embodies everything that Alex Ferguson wants from his captain, which is to drive and drive and drive and drive standards — sometimes to an unpleasant degree.
“Jesper Blomqvist is quoted in the book. He arrives and is genuinely staggered, shocked, and almost appalled by what he sees at first. Roy Keane barking at everyone, shouting at everyone. There are ‘welcoming gifts’ for all the players. Dwight Yorke turns up, he boots the ball and it bounces off him. [Keane says] ‘Christ, Cantona could get those.’ Jaap Stam receives the same [treatment].
“Keane is challenging every single one of them right from the start and he doesn’t care about being popular, he doesn’t care about being liked, he just cares that they’re going to win. And he cares that everyone is going to squeeze every drop of sweat and blood.”
Keane’s methods were not dissimilar to basketball icon Michael Jordan. The success of the hugely popular 2020 miniseries ‘The Last Dance,’ reinforced that point. It detailed the American star’s tendency to push teammates to the absolute limit amid the relentless and ruthless pursuit of success.
The widely seen documentary prompted comparisons with the Irishman’s similar behaviour in footballing circles, though with modern dressing rooms an increasingly sensitive environment and generally keen on professional behaviour in the conventional sense, whether these types of characters, who command fear and respect in equal measure, can still exist and thrive at the elite level is at least debatable.
“I think it’s harder,” says Dickinson. “Someone asked me this about Ferguson recently, and I do think with his man-management skills, there is something eternal about the ability to read and motivate people. And you could say, similarly to Keane to an extent — driven leaders should always have a place. But I do wonder whether the way he did it, he would need to round off some of the rougher edges.
“I just think that certainly to someone like Blomquist coming, it seemed like bullying. I’m not saying it doesn’t happen [at all] now and that is part of human nature, but I suspect that there would be rounding off of some of the more jagged edges if he was around today.”
But it wasn’t pure anger of a few authoritarian figures that drove United — there was an intelligence and control to dealing with players as well.
Ferguson would hardly have become one of football’s most successful ever managers had he simply been a ranter and raver. The Scottish legend had an emotional intelligence that is less talked about but equally crucial to the story.
“I just think he was someone who, through his own development in growing up or whatever had just got a very smart radar for people,” says Dickinson.
“In the days when Roy Keane and Alex Ferguson were saying nice things about each other, I heard Keane once say that Ferguson’s genius was just being able to walk into the training ground every day for 26 years and instinctively know what was needed that day.
“It wasn’t about tactical genius. It wasn’t about reinventing any kind of team building or training. It was based on a lot of things, but almost the biggest skill was just being able to smell the room and work out what was needed that day. Was it the hairdryer? Was it an arm around the shoulder with different players?
“Andy Cole talks about the fact that Ferguson was the first manager who might have found him moody, but he didn’t find his moodiness a problem. He allowed Cole to be himself because he knew that if he prodded and probed Cole, he would just drive him away. So he just harnessed the moodiness.
“With Dwight Yorke, he wasn’t afraid of bringing in someone who actually doesn’t seem a Ferguson-type player or character at all. But he got the best out of him.
“A Ferguson team is an alpha male team. That’s just the defining quality is that it has to be filled with big characters because he felt that’s what was needed to thrive at Old Trafford with the expectations.
“He liked people with an opinion. There was a quote: ‘It’s not tactics that win matches, it’s men.’ That was just his ethos.
“But that does present a manager with a challenge. If you fill a dressing room with alpha males, you’re going to have bust-ups and clashes and some of the rifts that we see.
“Ferguson’s brilliance was that he could allow those rifts to happen and yet still create a cause that kept the show on the road.”
The United legend was not as tactically sophisticated or details-orientated compared to say, Pep Guardiola or Jurgen Klopp nowadays, as his tendency to often keep a distance from training indicated.
However, Ferguson was smart enough to surround himself with modern young coaches who were among the most innovative of that era, a trait that was as much a key to his longevity as anything else.
The book details how he was also receptive to the ideas of Ramm Mylvaganam — an important figure in the early days of football’s data revolution.
“People ask: ‘What was he like?’ And I’ll say: ‘It’ll take me 10 minutes to describe his character because he was capable of being everything. He could be the most charming person you’ve ever met and obnoxious. He could be sensitive, insightful, and intelligent. And he could be brash and bullying.
“And I think part of his range was that he also understood that the world was changing around him and that he needed to keep updating his number two.
“So when Brian Kidd goes, he doesn’t go and get someone he knows, or an old mate, or a ‘yes man,’ he goes and gets Steve McClaren, who was at the time, a nobody. But everyone’s talking about him as one of the smartest coaches out there. And McClaren now is obviously forever tainted by, by certain things, not least an umbrella. But at the time, he was a guy who is at the cutting edge of data [and also was instrumental to Mylvaganam's introduction at United].
“Now we take it for granted, but Steve McClaren was the first coach dealing in the data world, in the statistical world in football and Ferguson has the intelligence to find that out and to appoint him. So there is a smartness there: ‘Right, I might be a sort of instinctively old school-motivated manager. So, therefore, I’ll go and get myself a smart and innovative new young coach who can educate me about the other stuff.”
It was not always a seamless mix with so many combustible characters but it worked more than not, as United’s incredible success proved.
“Another reason why he wanted alpha males in there is he wanted the players to challenge each other. I think harmony almost can be overrated in a dressing room. Obviously, you need people to be pulling in the right direction. But within that, there is room for players to fall out or push each other’s buttons and challenge each other.
Several players described the training as absolutely ferocious. But that’s what brought out the best in them.”
It is why Ferguson loved Keane in particular, ostensibly the biggest alpha male of them all. He had a tendency to almost will United over the line at times, most notably during the famous Champions League semi-final match away to Juventus, delivering unquestionably the standout individual display in arguably United’s most impressive standalone performance as a team that season.
Keane’s fiery, unrelenting, never-say-die attitude, in Ferguson’s eyes, was one of the team’s greatest assets — until, of course, it wasn’t.
As the years progressed, the midfielder was still the same ultra-dedicated, intense character — but his footballing powers were waning, injuries became more commonplace and the Irish star’s pace and physicality gradually started to decline.
By 2005, six years after their greatest achievement, Ferguson seemingly decided Keane had become more trouble than he was worth.
The never-aired MUTV interview, in which he reportedly criticised teammates in an unduly harsh and inappropriate manner, eventually led to the skipper’s exit from the club.
Yet it feels like the straw that broke the camel’s back as opposed to the sole reason for his departure. After all, Keane had been involved in bigger controversies, such as when he spent the night in a jail cell at the peak of his powers during that incredible 1999 season just a week before the Champions League final (he was suspended for the Bayern game anyway).
The decision to terminate his contract, after a 12-and-a-half-year stint at the club, surely had as much to do with the fact that Keane was no longer the player he used to be.
“I think that’s pretty fair,” says Dickinson, when it is put to him that the MUTV interview served as somewhat of a convenient excuse for the club and their legendary midfielder to part ways.
“I know Roy would dispute this, but he was getting injuries. And he was becoming a bit more of a peripheral figure in the team, but he was also struggling with those injuries and that was, I suspect, a hell of a source of frustration and grouchiness. The team was struggling and he was becoming a sort of divisive figure among fans.
“And I think Roy Keane, in a bad mood, probably everyone knows about it as well. So I think Ferguson was struggling to harness what was left of Keane’s career.
“But as far as I’m aware absolutely the pivotal moment in all this was not the video, it was the meeting in Ferguson’s office where he particularly goes for Carlos Quieroz.
“There had been trouble pre-season — it kicked off a bit there between Keane and Quieroz. And when they go into Ferguson’s office, the whole squad is there and Keane said things in there that you just don’t get away with.
“I think he pretty much knew by that stage that he was telling them where to stick it basically, he was almost daring Ferguson to kick him out.
“I wasn’t in the room but from what I’ve heard what was said in there, by that stage they knew it was pretty irreconcilable, I think. And Keane isn’t the type to go quietly, he decided to go out with a bang.”
Looking back on that 1999 season, there is consequently a retrospective sense of underlying melancholy when you consider that two of its main protagonists are no longer on speaking terms.
Some of the very same qualities that enabled them to hit those heights — the anger, the obsessiveness, the stubbornness, the ruthlessness necessary to reach the zenith of elite sport — also partially explain their mutual refusal to forgive and forget the bitter, acrimonious epilogue to a glorious story.
“As far as I’m aware, every time Keane speaks, he just reinforces his point [in the argument] rather than the opposite,” adds Dickinson. “I think Ferguson doesn’t speak about it much. But you can imagine he is aware of the media, he will pick up what is being said, and that will entrench his view.
“You’ve got someone like Gary Neville, who obviously gets on brilliantly with both and mixes with both, but it’s not as if he’s about to broker peace as far as I know.”
And so sadly, Dickinson suspects these two sporting greats will never bury the hatchet, in spite of everything they achieved together.
“I just think too much time has passed now. And I think it’s such a shame because it feels so unnecessary when you look at how brilliantly they worked together and how integral they were to each other’s careers, the fact that they brought out the best in each other.
“Keane becomes the manager’s complete enforcer, and how good they were to each other. Go back to the Turin game [against Juventus], the fact that they’re there and Keane is full of praise and loyalty to Ferguson and thinking that his winning the Champions League is all that he deserves, a reward for greatness and Ferguson showering Keane with the ‘selflessness’ [plaudit].
“Maybe it’s one of those relationships where they’re so combustible that it was always going to end in some bust-up. But I do think it’s a crying shame. I don’t know anyone who’s capable of knocking their heads together. I’ve certainly heard no hint of rapprochement on that one.”
1999: Manchester United, the Treble and All That by Matt Dickinson is published by Simon & Schuster. More info here.