Fuck beat me to it.
Roy Keane
Manchester United and Blackburn Rovers competed to sign Keane after Nottingham Forest's relegation in 1993. Manchester United were successful, signing Keane for a then-record £3.75m transfer fee. Keane immediately went into the first team, playing in centre-midfield alongside Paul Ince.
Although he maintains a low profile off the pitch, Keane was involved in numerous controversial incidents while at Manchester United, earning 11 red cards in the process. In 1995, he was sent off from an FA Cup semi-final for stamping on Gareth Southgate, for which he was suspended for three matches and fined £5,000.
After the retirement of Éric Cantona in 1997, Keane became team captain, although he missed most of the 1997/1998 season because of a cruciate ligament injury, caused by an ill-timed challenge on Leeds United player Alf Inge Haaland. As Keane lay prone on the ground, Haaland stood over Keane, accusing him of feigning injury. United were top of the league at the time, but their form dropped and they finished the season without a trophy.
Keane returned, however, to captain the club to an unprecedented treble in 1999 including the FA Premier League, FA Cup, and UEFA Champions League. One of his finest performances included an inspirational display to haul his team back from two goals down to win 3 – 2 during the semi-final second-leg against Juventus, scoring a header to start United's comeback. This was despite earlier in the match receiving a yellow card that ruled him out of the final after a trip on Zinedine Zidane. United defeated Bayern Munich at Nou Camp 2-1 to win the Champions League, scoring twice in injury time after trailing one-nil for most of the match. Keane received a winner's medal though he said that he has not looked at it. That year, Keane was named Man of the Match in the finals of the Intercontinental Cup, scoring the only goal of the game as United defeated Palmeiras. As a recognition for his efforts, Keane was voted PFA Players' Player of the Year in 2000.
In 2001, Keane played against Alf-Inge Haaland for the first time since their clash in 1998, and was sent off for a blatant knee-high foul on Haaland. He initially received a three game suspension. Keane subsequently admitted in an autobiography that he intended "to hurt" Haaland, which saw him banned for a further five matches and fined £150,000. Haaland retired from football shortly afterwards, stating on his website that the cause of this was a recurring problem in his leg, rather than an injury resulting from Keane's tackle.
In 2001-2002, Manchester United finished the season trophyless. Domestically, they were eliminated in the FA Cup by Middlesbrough in the fourth round, and finishing third in the Premiership. They made the semi-finals of the UEFA Champions League, their furthest advance since 1999 but they were knocked out by Bayer Leverkusen. After their defeat to Leverkusen, Keane blamed United's loss of form on the players’ Rolexes, the fleets of cars, the multi-millions, and told them they had lost their hunger. (Keane in particular was supposedly to have targeted one of the England players, Wes Brown, or Nicky Butt amongst others.) Earlier in the season, Keane had publicly advocated the breakup of The Treble-winning team as he believed that his team-mates, who had played in United's victorious 1999 Champions League final, no longer had the motivation to work as hard. (Keane himself had been forced to sit out of the 1999 final due to suspension and though he received a winner's medal, he felt that he had never really won the competition.)[1] [2]
In August 2002 he was fined two weeks' wages, £150,000, and suspended for three matches for elbowing Sunderland's Jason McAteer. This caused much controversy in the English press as Keane booked himself in for a hip operation and thus would have missed those three matches anyway.
In the 2000s, Keane maintained a healthy rivalry with Arsenal captain Patrick Vieira. The most notable incident was at Highbury in 2005, at the height of an extreme period of bad blood between United and Arsenal, where Vieira was taunting Keane's teammate Gary Neville. Keane afterwards criticised Vieira's decision to play internationally for France instead of his birthplace of Senegal. [3]
On 5 February 2005, Keane scored his 50th goal for Manchester United in a league game against Birmingham City. His appearance in the 2005 FA Cup final (which United lost to Arsenal in a penalty shoot out) was his seventh such game, an all-time record.
Overall, Keane would lead United to 9 major honours, making him the most successful captain in the club's illustrious history. Keane's trophy haul with Manchester United includes: 7 Premiership titles (1994, 1996, 1997, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2003), 4 FA Cups (1994, 1996, 1999, 2004), a European Cup (1999) and an Intercontinental Cup (1999).
Keane was inducted into the English Football Hall of Fame in 2004 in recognition of his undoubted impact on the English league.
Keane was also picked on the FIFA 100, a list of the greatest living footballers picked by Pelé.