Roy Keane Recalls The Time He Had A Fight With Peter Schmeichel In A Hotel At 4am

Roy Keane and Peter Schmeichel were not exactly the best of friends during their time at Manchester United. Take a late-night scrap on a pre-season trip to Singapore, for example; an incident that Keane has brilliantly recalled in a recent interview.

The former Republic of Ireland midfielder, known for his no-nonsense style, both on and off the pitch, eventually put his differences with Schmeichel to one side towards the latter part of their time at Old Trafford. But a fiesty 4am bust-up at a hotel left the big Dane with a black eye in 1998.

I'll let Roy tell the full story in this brilliant interview with former teammate Gary Neville on The Overlap's YouTube channel.

If you haven't got the time to watch the above (I highly recommend you make yourself a brew and do so), then here's what Keane said about the memorable incident.

"The good thing with me and Peter fighting that night - and it was his fault, he held his hand up and apologised - was that it was all fine," he told Neville, who couldn't stop laughing throughout.

"We were grown men in pre-season, a bit of tension in the group, which can happen. We were young men all playing to get into the team and for a contract. And Peter wanted a fight,"

"I had a fight with Pally [Gary Pallister] in Marbella, and I was with Pally a few weeks ago, great guy!

"I vaguely remember Bobby Charlton opening the door and seeing me and him; I bet he was thinking f*****g hell! But I think we won the league that year, so it helped."

Roy Keane

So what happened exactly in that hotel corridor? "Myself and Nicky Butt had had a night out and we bumped into Peter in the hotel reception," Keane said in his 2014 autobiography.

"It was about two in the morning. We said a few words to one one another - a bit of banter, a bit of stick.

"I went to Nicky's room for some room service, got up to go - and Peter was waiting for me, outside the room.

"He said 'I've had enough of you. It's time we sorted this out'. So I said 'Okay'.

"And we had a fight. It felt like ten minutes. There was a lot of noise - Peter's a big lad.

"I woke up the next morning and I vaguely remembered the fight. I was sharing with Denis Irwin and we were a few minutes late for the bus going to the airport.

"I remember saying to him, 'I think I was fighting last night'. My hand was really sore and one of my fingers was bent backwards."

Image: PA

Butt, who was often involved in the dressing room banter at Old Trafford, explained what happened in detail the morning after.

"I think Butty was on the scene," Keane added. "To be fair, he was around, and he explained what happened. My finger was bent back. I think Peter had a black eye to be fair to him.

"It had been brewing like it had been with Fergie. It does not just kick off. There's tension there."

This isn't the first time Keane has opened up about his intense relationship with the great Dane.

After Raheem Sterling and Joe Gomez were involved in a heated bust-up on international duty in 2019, Keane compared the situation to his scuffle with Schmeichel.

"From my own experience, I've previously had a fight with a player - Peter Schmeichel - in a hotel. Obviously, it was in the lobby, it was about four o'clock in the morning, there wasn't many people around," he told ITV.

"We got pulled by the manager, he said we were both a disgrace. To be fair to Peter, he apologised. But we moved on, it never affected us as teammates."

Peter Schmeichel is regarded as one of the Premier League's most legendary goalkeepers

So how did Sir Alex Ferguson react to the bust-up? "The manager had a go at us as we were getting on the bus, and people were going on about a fight at the hotel the night before. It started coming back to me," Keane added in his autobiography.

"Throughout the flight, Peter wore hs sunglasses. He never took them off and it wasn't very sunny.

"We landed. When the team arrived at a new destination, two of the players had to do a press conference. And this time, it just happened to be myself and Peter.

"In the meantime, Nicky Butt had been filling me on what had happened. Anyway, Peter had grabbed me, I'd head butted him - we'd been fighting for ages.

"At the press conference, Peter took his sunglasses off. He had a black eye. The questions came at him."

When asked about the injury, Schmeichel told reporters: "I just got an elbow at training last night."

Topics: Football, Manchester United, Peter Schmeichel, Roy Keane

Jack Kenmare

Jack Kenmare is a writer at SPORTbible. He's interviewed some of the biggest names in sport, including Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Pele, Carles Puyol and Tim Henman. He dabbles in all things sport but football is his biggest passion. He was once hit in the head by a wayward strike from Nicky Butt and lived to tell the tale.

@jackkenmare_