Gary Neville has revealed that Sir Alex Ferguson was furious when Ruud van Nistelrooy entered the Manchester United dressing room with a Manchester City shirt after the Red Devils were beaten 3-1 by their local rivals at Maine Road back in November 2002. Shaun Goater had netted twice after Nicolas Anelka had opened the scoring after just five minutes and Sir Alex was already livid at losing the derby, but ‘all hell broke lose’ when he noticed that Van Nistelrooy had a City shirt on him. Neville recalled: ‘At the end of that game – I think it came out [in the press] – somebody asked to swap shirts with Ruud, and he swapped shirts and he walked into the dressing room with a Manchester City shirt on his [chest]. I mean, all hell broke lose. He [Sir Alex] snapped. And basically said, “None of you ever, ever swap one of my shirts ever again!” and pointed towards the City shirt. He went absolutely mad, crazy. And then it went quiet.’
Roy Keane chimed in: ‘Europe wasn’t too bad, but not in a league game and not with City. That was a bit much.’ Neville added that he managed to get a few shirts before the ban was implemented, including those of Brazilian Ronaldo, Paolo Maldini, Roberto Carlos and Alessandro Del Piero. Keane had no interest in collecting the shirts of his rivals, though there was one occasion where he perhaps regrets not asking for a picture with a certain legendary sportsman. He said: ‘I never bothered with shirts, honestly. I didn’t think it was a good thing to be chasing players, swapping shirts. Remember we went to the BBC [Sports Personality of the Year] awards, we should have asked Muhammad Ali. He was there and all the lads got one with him but I didn’t, I just thought it was disrespectful. Leave the man alone. He wasn’t well at the time.’