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The Champions League Final 2012 - Football League Play-off Finals

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Zizouz Newbie

Zizouz

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Bayern Munich: Neuer, Lahm, Boateng, Tymoschuk, Contento, Schweinsteiger, Kroos, Robben, Muller, Ribery, Gomez. Subs: Butt, Van Buyten, Petersen, Olic, Rafinha, Usami, Pranjic.

Chelsea: Cech, Bosingwa, Luiz, Cahill, Cole, Kalou, Mikel, Lampard, Bertrand, Mata, Drogba. Subs: Turnbull, Essien, Romeu, Torres, Malouda, Ferreira, Sturridge.

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Mame Biram Diouf Newbie

Mame Biram Diouf

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TO his Manchester United team-mates it is a miraculous medal, but there isn't a prayer of Roy Keane ever feeling the same way.

The Champions League medals United won in such dramatic fashion two years ago mean more to most players than even their flash cars, yet Keane would swop his for a packet of the crisps he advertises.

Never mind that United sent Bayern Munich into a dizzying spin and history into a 360 degree pirouette with two goals in the final 90 seconds of that extraordinary game in Barcelona's Nou Camp.

All Keane remembers of that Catalan evening is sitting uneasily in the stand and wishing desperately he was somewhere else.

It is how you imagine Bono might feel if, suffering from a sore throat, he was forced to watch from the Gods as a replacement took over lead vocals for the biggest U2 concert of the decade.

And it why Keane never takes the medal from the bottom of the drawer, why he never watches re-runs of 1999.

"The fact I was suspended for the final changed everything. The medal means absolutely nothing to me," Keane admitted in an interview while away with Ireland in Cyprus a fortnight ago.

"Being there was just an act for me that night. You're there, but you're not there.

"You're on the outside looking in, sitting with guests up in the stands like one of the sponsors. The medal means nothing to me.

"I was happy for the team, but I felt I had gate-crashed the party."

Being asked to watch a video showing those closing Nou Camp moments from 100 different angles could hardly fill the Bayern Munich players with more dread than Keane's words.

As the two teams prepare for another massive European summit at Old Trafford, the last thing the Germans want is a driven Keane.

They would have seen how the Irishman's manic desire to play in the 2002 World Cup finals enabled him to reach a level of intensity in both Cyprus and Andorra that blew the Group Two minnows away.

Keane tends to pursue his goals as if they were fugitives for whom he had posted bail.

Now he is saying that he wants a second Champions League medal (to the 29-year-old Corkman it will feel like a first) just as much as he wishes to take a central role in Japan and Korea next summer.

"The quarter-final of the European Cup is definitely crunch time. If we win the Premier League but don't win the European Cup it will be classed as a disappointing season," says Keane.

"It is the same for all the top teams in Europe. We have dominated English football for quite a few years, but it's all about stepping up into Europe.

"This will be our fifth year in a row to get to the quarters, but that's not good enough.

"Okay we won two years ago, but you need to keep getting back to the finals but I admit its bloody hard.

"The good teams all think they have a right to win it and when you have eight big teams thinking the same thing its tough.

"It will all come down to a bit of luck and who wants it most. Who will run that extra five yards? Who will do that extra bit?"

Keane also said: "Even if I had played two years ago, I would be just as hungry to get back."

His namesake Robbie Keane will understand a little of how his international team-mate felt in 1999.

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