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14th Sep 2017

Antonio Conte would agree with Roy Keane’s description of Diego Costa

This is a new one

Robert Redmond

Antonio Conte would agree with Keane.

Roy Keane has really put other football pundits to shame during the Champions League fixtures this week. On Tuesday night, BT Sport had Rio Ferdinand, Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard on punditry duty for Manchester United’s game against FC Basel. The following night, Ferdinand and Lampard were joined by Michael Owen for coverage of Liverpool’s tie with Sevilla.

Between them, across two nights, they had over two hours of screen-time to provide analysis, and not one of them came close to saying anything as interesting as Keane, who had a couple of minutes air-time on ITV’s Champions League highlights show.

Ferdinand and Lampard are articulate pundits, who are usually quite good, but the less said about Owen the better. However, despite having very limited time on ITV, Keane’s thoughts proved more interesting than the rest combined.

The former Manchester United captain bluntly shot down Liverpool’s chances of silverware after their 2-2 draw with Sevilla.

“This sums up Liverpool in a nutshell, why they are not going to win anything,” Keane said.

On Wednesday night, Marco Asensio missed Real Madrid’s 3-0 win over Apoel because of an infected pimple, caused by shaving his legs, which left him unable to put on his socks.

Keane reacted exactly how you would expect when discovering a player missed a game due to shaving his legs.

Keane and Lee Dixon then discussed Diego Costa’s absence from Chelsea. The striker refused to return to the club from his native Brazil during pre-season, and held out for a move to Atletico Madrid that failed to materialise.

The deal could still happen in January, when Atletico can register players again after their transfer ban, and Chelsea have already replaced Costa with Alvaro Morata.

Keane reckons Chelsea shouldn’t worry, as they don’t need Costa because he’s a “balloon.”

“They are better off without him,” the Republic of Ireland assistant manager said.

“The guy is obviously big trouble. I know he has done well for them, but he looks to me to be a bit of a balloon. Get rid of him, have players at your club that want to be there.”

A “balloon” isn’t exactly a common phrase to use when describing someone, but no doubt Conte would agree with Keane’s assessment.

You can watch Keane here: