Martin O’Neill has said he believes Roy Keane was wrong in Saipan.

O’Neill said he feels Keane made a mistake in how he dealt with the infamous situation in 2002 - which saw Keane embroiled in an explosive row with former manager Mick McCarthy and subsequently leaving the Irish World Cup camp - and he has told Keane as much.

“If you’re going back to Saipan, way back in that time, I would have to say that my own view at that time, is that I would have disagreed with Roy,” O’Neill said to the Sunday Independent.

“I would have felt that, having qualified for the World Cup, it doesn’t come around too often – for some great players it has never come around at all – and here was this opportunity.

“I thought that would have been, regardless of what Roy would have felt about it before, this was a chance to participate in a World Cup and for a great player, even more so, from that viewpoint. So I would have had a disagreement with that,” he added.

O’Neill admitted that when he told Keane he disagreed with his handling of Saipan the former Manchester United midfielder responded by telling O’Neill that he disagreed with his team selection for Celtic’s 2003 UEFA cup final against Porto. Celtic lost the game 3-2 in extra time to Jose Mourinho’s Porto, but Keane told O’Neill he would have won the game.