Michail Antonio has ripped into Roy Keane for his “dinosaur mentality” regarding footballers.
Personality wise, you’d struggle to find two people more juxtaposing that Michail Antonio and Roy Keane. One is the joker, the life of the party who is always trying to make others laugh, while the other is always dead serious and wants to be seen as a hard man.
Unfortunately Roy Keane has never been able to realise that football is meant to be enjoyable and that it isn’t the be all and end all. His most recent outrageous comment was aimed at Antonio, claiming that podcasts “can be a distraction for a claimed”, before ridiculously claiming that he doesn’t “think you should laugh for a week or two if you’ve been beaten.”
However, the West Ham No.9 has not just let Keane’s comments slide and has hit back on his latest podcast episode. “It’s dinosaur mentality because when he [Keane] was playing, every manager, every fan, everybody, constantly said, ‘Focus on your football. Go to sleep with a football in your arms – the only thing you’re allowed to think about is football. Your wife deals with your kids, don’t play with your kids – football’,” Antonio stated.
“That’s what it was when he was playing. Obviously in time players who played with him went bankrupt because all they did think about was football and that’s all it was. Now, obviously footballers are focusing on their football, can do their football, but can also focus on other things: business, fashion, some are rappers now. People focus on other things.”
“If I’ve got time to do this then why shouldn’t I? With the podcast I understand that if you’ve got battered on the weekend – which I did – it’s not a thing about being sad for two weeks because there’s another game coming next week. You’re meant to forget what happened on the last weekend and make it better the next week.”
“That’s why a lot of players struggle with mental health problems because people are telling them they’re meant to struggle for two whole weeks because they got battered on the weekend. No, you deal with it. You are sad when you leave and for that night.”
While the majority of West Ham fans don’t like the fact their striker does a podcast, especially considering most of the things he says come back to bite him, he is absolutely spot on. It is vital that footballers are able to do what they want with their free time to be able to get them in the right headspace for the next game.
Sometimes it’s hard to tell if Keane really believes what he is saying, but he really needs to drop this hard man act. Saying someone shouldn’t laugh for two weeks because they lost a game of football is just pathetic.
