Mick McCarthy has made his ill-feeling towards Roy Keane – and the new Steve Coogan film depicting their 2002 World Cup fall-out – very clear in an x-rated speech at an event this week.
McCarthy and Keane’s two decade-long feud was dredged up this year with the release of Saipan, which sees Steve Coogan and Eanna Hardwicke star as the manager and captain of Ireland on a fateful pre-World Cup trip.
The pair fell out at the Republic of Ireland’s training camp on the pacific island of Saipan almost 24 years ago. The facilities were so poor that the team arrived without footballs and Keane did not hold back on McCarthy’s handling of it. After much drama, angst and conflict, he flew home.
Daily Mail football editor Ian Ladyman wrote that Hardwicke ‘gets Keane so perfectly it’s vaguely chilling’. But McCarthy, 67, is much less impressed with Coogan’s depiction of him.
And he still holds plenty of anger for Keane too – dubbing him a ‘c***’ at an event hosted by The Sun in Ireland.
Steve Coogan and Eanna Hardwicke starred as Mick McCarthy and Roy Keane in Saipan
McCarthy and Keane did not see eye-to-eye with Ireland – and are still enemies now
‘What’s it been, 24 years? And I still keep getting asked about it,’ McCarthy said. ‘I mean, I do these Q&As, the last one I did, I got asked about Keane.
‘I said: “You know, he’s a fabulous player, great captain, captain of his club and everywhere he’s been and what he’s done is fantastic.”
‘I said, “great goalscorer” – and everybody’s looking at me – and I said: “I’m talking about [old Ireland team-mate] Robbie [Keane], not that other c***.”‘
McCarthy, whose most recent job in football was with Blackpool in 2023, also revealed how he walked out of the move after just 20 minutes.
His anger of Coogan’s portrayal of him was supported by Ireland legend Niall Quinn, who also attended the event. Quinn, who scored 21 goals and won 92 caps his country, went onto reveal why he had opted against going to watch the film.
He said: ‘There was no point in seeing it because I’d have gotten frustrated as well.
‘A friend of mine saw it, and he said to me, “You’ll be pleased to know they play you as a complete drunk who offers nothing to anything”.
‘And I went, “Yeah, well OK, they might have a bit of a point there!”‘
Keane, 54, continues to divide opinion in his prominent TV roles as a pundit while McCarthy has stepped back from public-facing football work.
Keane did not hold back on his manager – and McCarthy still now calls him a ‘****’
But the high-profile release of Saipan, which debuted in Ireland at the end of last year and in the United Kingdom in early 2026, has thrust the spat back into focus.
McCarthy, who did speak to Coogan before the film was released, was not impressed with the re-telling of the story.
He said: ‘My family and I all went to look at it, and it’s a heap of s*** to be fair, and my concern is, he’s about 5ft 8in, Steve Coogan, and in the film Roy towers above him for f***’s sake.
‘And yes, I did speak to him [Coogan], because I got asked, but then I saw in one of the Irish newspapers that I coached him – no I f***ing didn’t coach him.’
Keane’s frustrations stemmed from the state of the pitches in Saipan, which he described as ‘rock hard’.
‘I can’t imagine any other countries in the world who are far worse off than us, playing on something like that,’ Keane said at the time. The midfielder denied that he was being a ‘prima donna’ in his behaviour and insisted the facilities used by the team were ‘dangerous’.
