Again from The Observer’s interview
'It's been a hard mix,' he replies, falling silent for a long moment. 'Off the pitch, I have this "leave me alone" sort of attitude. I'm working on it, though. As you get older, you mellow. Or, you see things differently. See, back then, I'd be out with the lads and I'd feel part of it all for a while, and then other times, I'd feel like I was somehow a bit different, but not in a nasty way. Removed.'
So you drank to fit in?
'I don't know.' He pauses. 'I don't know if I'd go that far. The thing is, I'd be out in the afternoon because I'd need a few drinks to relax before I met up with the lads at five. Which is crazy. Lads I play with every day, train with every day, and I'd be "I'm meeting the lads tonight, I'd better have a few before I meet them". Madness.'
Because you felt shy or awkward?
'Yeah. Maybe so.' He laughs, slightly embarrassed. 'See it was a vicious circle for me. I'd keep to myself, then I'd meet the lads and I'd be ready for a bit of action. I kind of go berserk, if you know what I mean. The trouble might come, and I'd be full of remorse, feeling bad. It'd be, "Oh Jesus, I'm not going out ever again". And then I'd keep to myself for weeks.'
The long lay-off caused by his cruciate injury was a bleak time for a man whose life, as he suddenly realised, was defined to an extraordinary degree by those regular 90-minute bouts of combat on the pitch. He admits to feeling lost and frustrated without the purpose and the adrenalin of football. His drinking escalated. He had a row with a barman at a United reserve team party; another with his manager after he was subsequently banned from attending the first team party. His response was to go out on a drinking spree on his own.
'The injury,' he says now, 'was an eye opener. It was a big blow for me. I was only 27, 28. I'm not saying I ever took things for granted, but I had started to relax a little, and enjoy things. I was thinking, this is what it's all about, then, suddenly it seemed like it might all be over.'
Was it that serious?
'Oh yeah. Especially the way I was carrying on. I was out on the piss every night.'
On crutches?
'Oh yeah,' he laughs. 'Ridiculous. Totally ridiculous. I was doing a lot of stuff I shouldn't have been doing - not just dancing but daft stuff like jumping over hedges and cars. I'd sometimes come in the next day and I couldn't move for my knee.'
Keane denies that he checked into The Priory, the rehab clinic of choice for the rich and famous, for alcohol-related depression in the summer of 2000. He says he has a letter from the staff there that backs him up. He also denies attending meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous at around the same time in a Quaker hall near his home in Sale, Cheshire.
His decision to wise up, stop drinking, and get down to the serious and dogged business of recovery came when he spent some long evenings sitting alone in the old Manchester United training ground while his team mates went through their paces.
'I'd watch the lads finish training,' he recalls, 'and they'd shoot off out of there like the building was on fire, like they couldn't get away quick enough. I said to myself, "If I do get back there, I'm going to work on the things I need to work on".' Now, he says, he often has to be 'dragged away' from United's new all-purpose training centre. 'I'll get it all back later in my career. It's no good doing this stuff when I'm 33 or 34, and it's too late.'