In the hotel lounge behind me, Bray said, "You cheeky sod," to a television in Moscow at 20 past 4 in the morning.
Keane, flat: "You have never done it, then."
"Done what?"
"Stood in front of a room of players who have just lost something." Keane did not look at him. "Because I have, and it does not make you feel better. It makes you feel considerably worse, and you do it anyway, because they are 19 and you are not."
"So you think it was for them."
"I think," Keane said, "that if he wanted to feel better he would have said what every manager in this game says, which is that we win together and we lose together, and everybody nods and nobody remembers it by Thursday.
"He did not say that. He named the 3 players he sent up and then said the reason was him. That is not a man managing his image, Jamie. A man managing his image does not hand you a clip that can be played at him for 20 years."
"I still think he has made himself the story."
