By Oisin Doherty

Copyright irishmirror

Since bursting onto the scene as a youngster with Nottingham Forest in the early 1990’s, Roy Keane has been a continuous presence in Irish sporting life.

Throughout the 90’s and 2000’s, Keane was Sir Alex Ferguson’s general on the pitch for Manchester United, leading the Red Devils to every major title available during a glorious 12 and a half years at the club.

At International level, Keane is regarded as one of Ireland’s greatest ever players and turned in some legendary performances for The Boys in Green.

And while the Saipan debacle is mentioned far too often, it must be remembered that Keane featured for Ireland at the 1994 World Cup in the USA, even playing in the famous win over Italy at Giants Stadium.

As one of the biggest names in Irish and indeed English sport over the past three decades, Keane has been well remunerated for both his time as a footballer and as a pundit.

He even served as manager on two occasions at Sunderland and Ipswich, and has held numerous assistant manager roles.

It should come as no surprise therefore, to learn that Roy Keane has an absolutely staggering financial net worth.

How staggering? Well, try £46 million on for size.

That is the figure touted by the website Celebrity Net Worth, reported by both the Manchester Evening News and Wales Online.

Just last week, Keane discussed his finances on the stick to football podcast. On the show, Keane, Gary Neville, Ian Wright, Jamie Carragher and Jill Scott discussed a recent BBC documentary that told the story of a group of former Premier League footballers that had lost millions after investing in asset management firms.

“I think all of us will have stories,” Keane said on the Stick to Football podcast

“I’ve gone into one or two things [and] lost a lot, a lot of money.

“Again, people you trust. That’s why I go back to it, any young sportsperson, get a good accountant!”

During his playing days, Keane was one of the top earners in British football. A few weeks ago, he brought some of his old contracts into the Stick to football studio, and allowed Gary Neville to go through them in depth for the viewers at home.

For Keane, his contract between 2000-2003 saw the Corkman earn £1 million bonus per annum on top of his base salary of £2.75m, taking his total salary to £3.75m, which was reduced to £3.5m per annum when he re-signed partway through that deal.

“There is a contract for £2.75m-a-year in 2000 to 2003,” said Neville. “Signing on fee for £1m. Wow. So you got £3.75m-a-year.”

“Then you’ve renewed and gone to £3.5m-per-annum in 2003-2005. And then they put your wages down?” questioned Neville, with Keane explaining that at United, older players had their salaries reduced, but they were eligible for more performance based bonuses.

“That’s double what I was earning in my last contract,” said Neville, comparing his contract to Keane’s, with Jamie Carragher claiming that Neville was underpaid for the quality of player that he was.

“He left six years before me, I finished on £2.3m in 2011.

While the sums involved are astronomical, they are nothing compared to the wages being offered today. Keane would have been one of the highest paid players if not the top earner at United on around £72,000 per week.

These days, the reported top earner at Manchester United is Casemiro, who earns up to £350,000 per week.

The Irishman has taken aim at United’s highly paid stars for years, but on Sunday, it was the turn of Ruben Amorim to feel the wrath of Keane as the Cork native tore into the United manager for not being too upset after the awful 3-0 loss away to Manchester City.

“He said there he’s not too angry, he’s happy with the effort…they have lost 3-0 in a derby game. You should be fuming, you should be raging,” the Sky Sports pundit said.

“He is talking about moments, but football games are decided by moments. It always seems to be moments of the opposition than United at this moment in time, and I am including teams like Grimsby by the way.

“He should be raging, I like managers who are emotional but I like my managers to show anger as well. I just couldn’t imagine being in a dressing room after losing a derby game 3-0 and everyone going ‘did we all try?'”