• Autobiographies

Keane and Pietersen provide the rocket fuel sport needs

Roy Keane got a few things off his chest in his new autobiography © Getty Images

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It's Friday. A day too far. I'm suffering from revelation-fatigue, from row-weariness, and if I hear one more example of the hatred that will not die I might give up sport and start writing about something a little easier on the nerves. War, perhaps.

Keano hates Fergie. Yes, we all knew that - but how much? Roy Keane isn't quite sure, but doubts if the grave will have much effect on his loathing of Sir Alex Ferguson. That's been going on all week, so yesterday Keane freshened things up by telling us he despises Jose Mourinho.

Keane is busy launching an autobiography, his second, called The Second Half, not that halves came into it much during his drinking days. And in a usefully quiet week for sporting happenings - apart from the unbearable tensions of England v San Marino - the agenda has been dominated by hatred and revenge.

Keane's book has been running a breathless second all week to Kevin Pietersen's, which is all about the hateful meanies who run the England cricket team, and who ended up getting him sacked. No one can understand me, he told us, though the response from his team-mates seems to edit out the prefix "under".

Such rows are part of sport's eternal round. The combination of lofty talent and inability to deal with the people around you is something you can come across in many different circumstances - would you want Vincent van Gogh in your team of decorators? But such characteristics stand out in sport, partly because sport is fundamentally adversarial, and partly because of sport's ancient traditions of gentlemanly restraint.

Keane pours out an unmellowed fury against Ferguson, his former manager at Old Trafford. He also reports a fight with the Manchester United goalkeeper Peter Schmeichel, as best he can recall it from an alcoholic amnesia. In his previous book it explained that he had deliberately injured an opponent.

Johann Cruyff and Roy Keane both made teams their own © PA Photos

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So Keane is a difficult person. You never know who he'll turn on next. It might well be you. So would you want him on your team? Damn right you would. There are rare, rare players who can drive a team with the power of their play and their personality: people like Franz Beckenbauer and Johann Cruyff. I wouldn't put Keane at that level, but he certainly took a great team and made it his own.

That's what's worth treasuring about Keane: the way he could make Manchester United change pace and roar away. His unquiet nature would cause him to miss matches from suspensions incurred after terrible detonations of rage, and drink was a problem for years. But he was worth the trouble. He and and Ferguson understood each other very well - and each got what he wanted from the other.

Keane and Pietersen are or were exceptional talents, and they are also archetypal sporting personalities - along with the ordinary player with terrific heart and the ever-reliable team-man. Football constantly throws up such people. Liverpool are currently dealing with Mario Balotelli: perhaps not quite talented enough for the trouble he causes.

But Eric Cantona was. Great teams are not built entirely on great team-men: Cantona's sense of personal uniqueness was precisely what Ferguson needed to transform Manchester United from contenders to champions as of right.

Wayne Rooney scored for England again on Thursday night. He will probably end up England's all-time top goal-scorer: but his journey has not been one of unruffled calm. Rage on the pitch, reckless behaviour off: he's one of those men who makes headlines the way the rest of us brush our teeth.

Sport is full of difficult people, and if you want their talents you have to find an accommodation with their difficult personalities.

Wayne Rooney regularly makes headlines © Getty Images

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Even the Republic of China concedes as much. The diver Guo Jingjing, asked at a press conference whom she considered her greatest rival, answered undiplomatically: "The fat Canadian".

I was in the Oxford Union, of all places. The year was 1987. There was a public debate about the Oxford Boat Race mutiny: the seismic row that had shattered the traditional jolly-good-sport nature of the event. After a lot of semi-facetious nonsense from a series of public school posers - probably all members of the government by now - Chris Penny, one of the Americans who had caused all the trouble, got up to speak. He was furious, intense, self-righteous. You need us, he said. Because we make the boat go fast - "we're rocket fuel".

Historical note: Oxford won without rocket fuel - but the following year they made Penny president of the boat club, got rid of the old coach - and won again.

It's a plain fact of sport that rocket fuel helps. It powers you beyond the stratosphere - that's if it doesn't blow up in your face. Sir Dave Brailsford took Team Sky to successive victories for British riders in the Tour de France, and he talked this week of the problems of having Sir Bradley Wiggins and Chris Froome in the same team. So much easier without either of them, or preferably both. Except that you wouldn't actually win any races that way.

Inside every champion there's a bastard. Often just a hint, a pinch or a smidgen of bastardy, but it's always there. And with some, it's their most pronounced characteristic. The fact that they win stuff doesn't excuse appalling behaviour - that genius forgives all is a doubtful proposition even for genuine geniuses - but it helps to explain them.

Sport needs bastards - but every now and then, sport has to reckon the price. That's been the lesson of the week. In the film Annie Hall, Woody Allen tells a joke: 'my brother thinks he's a chicken. Well, why don't you turn him in? I would - but I need the eggs'.

Kevin Pietersen gave his view of the England set-up in his new book © Getty Images

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Simon Barnes was Chief Sports Writer at The Times and UK Sports Columnist of the Year in 2001 and 2007. He writes about a wide variety of sports for ESPN.co.uk, as well as ESPNFC.com and ESPNcricinfo. He has written more than 20 books including The Meaning of Sport and three novels. On Twitter he is @simonbarneswild

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