BLOMQVIST REVEALS KEANE'S ANGER

Last updated : 11 May 2006 By Ed

From a book, Match of My Life - European Cup Finals.

"Keane was furious with me after the second leg of the Champions League semi-final against Juventus.

"It was a fantastic game, which started with us going 2-0 down in the first ten minutes.

"But Keane scored from a header soon after, and Dwight Yorke made it 2-2 before half-time. With five minutes left, Andy Cole completed the comeback: it was a game that gave us so much confidence for the final, and helped us believe that nothing was impossible.

"I have seen the incident which led to the booking on TV since then.

"It was a bad pass by me, I admit that, but it was also a bad first touch by Keane. Also, it was in the middle of the pitch, and there were still a lot of players who could have covered that Juventus attack.

"Keane kept talking about it for a few weeks afterwards. Then it turned into a running joke, and he always referred to it during my time at Old Trafford. I can understand it in a way. The game we had just qualified for was the biggest game of our careers.

"For Keane, though, his tournament ended with that game. I hit a pass to him that was intercepted by one of the Juventus players, and Roy felt he had to make a tackle on Zinedine Zidane to stop him starting a counter-attack. He was yellow-carded, and knew there and then that he would miss the final. I remember his eyes when he looked at me after that tackle.

" 'It's your f***ing fault that I'm going to miss the final,' he said. It was tough to hear, of course, but I didn't care too much. That was the way he worked. Things were never his fault."

More:

"There were people in the United team who you didn't mess with. Roy Keane was the obvious No.1 in the hierarchy.

"For a long time I just thought he was mad, or annoying. He was always shouting, arguing, criticising and being provocative. I thought he was so selfish and egotistic. But after a while I realised that, even if his methods were strange, he always put the team first.

"As a Swede who believes there are other kinds of solutions to problems - and I still think there are better methods than his - I thought he was strange. But everything he did was because of the team.

"Some of the guys received a lot of stick: poor Phil Neville, for example, got more than his share. I think Phil is a better footballer than his brother, but he doesn't have Gary's mental strength."

26th May 2006:

"It was a disappointment to be substituted, but at the time it felt natural.

"Then it happened so quickly, with the goals from Sheringham and then Solskjaer, that there hardly was any time to react in between. There was euphoria, the feeling that something impossible had just happened.

"But the strangest feeling was my own. I was proud and happy. Yet I still felt that I hadn't contributed. Now, I was part of something historic, but my biggest achievement had been to leave the field to make room for Sheringham, who scored a goal. It was a strange feeling."