Roy Keane described the former Liverpool star as “one of the best players he ever met” during his legendary football career.
Keane enjoyed a legendary playing career, notably winning seven Premier League titles with Manchester United. He won the Scottish Premiership with Celtic before managing Sunderland and Ipswich Town.At Sunderland, he won the league title in 2006/07 and secured promotion to the Premier League.
In his best season, Keane had former Liverpool striker Djibril Cisse under his wing, who praised him as “one of the best players we’ve ever had”.Speaking on the Stick to Football podcast, he said: “Sometimes you don’t know a player until they walk into the building. “I get a lot of calls and people say, ‘He’s a good kid’ and ‘I don’t know.’
I remember trying to get hold of Djibril Cisse and everyone telling me he’s not a real kid.” Nice guy but I took a chance and he was one of the nicest people I’ve ever met. “Honestly, you don’t know the players until you walk into the building.”The feeling is mutual as Cisse, who scored 24 goals for Liverpool, likes Keane’s no-nonsense management style.
Asked about his time playing under the former Manchester United captain, the Frenchman told FourFourTwo: “Oh, I love it. “Marseille were spending quite a lot of money on new players at the time, so when my agent contacted me and said Roy Keane wanted me to go on loan to Sunderland, I thought about it.”I didn’t have time to play for Marseille, so I said: ‘Why not?’ I thought: Roy was great. I was never nervous around him.
We have something in common, we both take football very seriously. “I’ve never forgotten how important it is to any club.”Cisse, who plays for Queens Park Rangers, added: “Roy was always very honest with me and brought out the best in me. I remember a game. We went into halftime and didn’t have a good game. Not bad, but I wasn’t myself.
Roy came in and followed me. “Oh my God, he was yelling at me. It was really crazy, really cool. It’s been 15 years since Guy Roux yelled at me when I was little. I understood what Roy was doing. Like Guy, he tried to set me up. So I lifted my head and smiled. I laughed because I knew what he was doing.
