Roy Keane reveals he rejected Real Madrid to sign for Celtic

The Manchester United legend’s arrival at Parkhead in December 2005 was greeted with huge excitement, with Celtic pulling off one of the most eye-catching signings in Scottish football at the time.

Keane was approaching the end of his career and his short spell in Glasgow never quite lived up to the enormous expectations surrounding his arrival, although a man-of-the-match performance against Rangers at Ibrox provided a memorable highlight.

Almost 21 years later, Keane has now underlined just how significant a coup his signing was by revealing he could have moved to the Bernabeu instead.

Asked by Richards on Sky Sports about his chances of moving to Europe, Keane said: “I want to say I came close, maybe on two occasions. I forget what year it was, but my contract had just expired, and I’d just came back from 2000.

“I spoke to a number of clubs, and I kind of had a contract agreed with Bayern Munich. So Bayern would’ve been the closest, and also Juventus. I spoke to Juventus.

“So that would’ve been the closest, but I managed to end up agreeing a contract with United. No regrets, but going abroad, I think it would’ve been a great experience, don’t get me wrong. And if I was speaking to a young player now, I would say to them: ‘It’s a good experience’.

“But I was happy at United. And when I did leave United, obviously I went to Celtic, and I had a chance – I had agreed a deal with Real Madrid for a year and a half.

“But I just fancied a spell at Celtic. I had a deal agreed with [Real,] literally, but I decided that Celtic was the best option… [laughs].”

Richards said: “We all love Celtic!”, Keane replied: “Yeah, of course.”