Roy Keane was determined to set the standard in every single training session during his time at Manchester United – and a teenage Cristiano Ronaldo soon became aware of his lofty expectations.
The former United captain, who spent 12 trophy-laden years at Old Trafford, expected nothing but the best from his teammates. In fact, players would get to training two hours before it started with Keane as their skipper.
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"He had so much influence in the team, and if you dropped your standards, you would hear from him," recalled former teammate Quinton Fortune in a recent interview.
"He wasn't just keeping an eye on whose standards were dropping, though, he was setting them himself. He could talk the talk and walk the walk; he was just relentless every day.
"I wish people could see how much this guy trained; he was unbelievable."
Keane was relentless. Even a teenage Cristiano Ronaldo, who was making real waves at the club following a £12 million move from Sporting CP, was in the firing line.
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A training ground clip from 2003, when Ronaldo was just 18-years-old, has been doing the rounds on social media of late.
As you can see in the footage below, the Portuguese winger failed to track back in the session and as a result, the opposition went on to score past goalkeeper Tim Howard. "Cristiano, come on!" cries Keane.
As mentioned earlier, when Keane turned up to training early, the rest soon followed.
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Former Manchester United defender Quinton Fortune expanded on the unspoken rule. "You just picked it up from day one," he said. "You needed to be on your toes every day in training, because if you weren't someone else would take your place. It was as simple as that.
"If training started at 10:15am, you'd be thinking 'OK, I need to be in at 9, maybe even 8am'. You'd get in early, have your breakfast, do your stretches, be out on the pitch at 10am, ready for training.
"You saw Gary and Phil Neville doing it, Cristiano [Ronaldo], Roy Keane, all these guys were doing it, so new players would just pick it up naturally.
"We would treat every training session like it was our last, and that became a habit for everyone at the club. You came in and just thought 'is this normal?' but match day would come around and it would be easy."
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Topics: Roy Keane, Cristiano Ronaldo, Manchester United
