ROY KEANE believes he should have retired after leaving Manchester United.
Instead, the Red Devils legend joined Celtic before injuries forced him to retire six months later.
Keane revealed how he played through the pain barrier at Celtic Park and needed to take painkillers just to train.
Injury problems limited the midfielder to just 13 appearances for Celtic before hanging up his boots.
He told Sky Bet’s Stick to Football: “I should have retired when I left Manchester United, the day I left the club.
“I even lost a bit of the love for the game after that, I left United and went up to Celtic, my hip was at me, painkillers for training, tore my hamstring two or three times, commuting, thinking I’m 34 now.
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“I still had a year left on my contract [at Celtic] and I went to see the hip specialist and they said that the longer I play the worse damage.
“The beauty is that when I rang Gordon Strachan, I told him that I’m finished, I was losing sleep before I rang him but as soon as I put the phone down I had closure on my career, no hesitation, it wasn’t a relief but something was lifted off me.”
Keane experienced injury problems throughout his career including tearing his anterior cruciate ligament in 1997.
A hip problem also kept him out for months in 2002, with the issue ultimately contributing to his retirement.
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Gary Neville, who featured alongside Keane on Stick to Football, also admitted he should have retired before he did.
The pundit said: “I got injured in 2007 and I missed the whole of the Champions League season in 2008 – that wasn’t the point where I felt that I was going to retire because I was still 33, it was when I came back after eight months and felt like the game had moved on.
“The injury was the ankle, I was out for eight months and had lots of problems with it, but then I also started pulling my calves and I was having those injections that felt like oil.
“When I came back, every season I thought I was going to retire but they just offered me another year. I retired at Christmas in the 2010-11 season, and I should have definitely retired the year before, I knew that I’d gone.”
Source: Soccer - thesun.co.uk
