Former Irish international soccer player Roy Keane has been criticised for saying yoga resulted in his “worst ever” football performance.
The Cork man said he tried yoga for the first time a few days prior to playing against Real Madrid for Manchester United in 2003, and that he didn’t have much energy for the home match.
Keane made the light-hearted comments while speaking to former footballer and current pundit Gary Neville on Sky Sport’s The Overlap.
“We played Real Madrid one time at home, but I just tried yoga a couple of days before that . . . and I couldn’t get going,” he said.
“My energy . . . I couldn’t get a kick. I was taken off, and I remember thinking ‘I’m finished with real top level football’,” he said.
Following the comments, the Hindu community criticised the footballer for “blaming yoga” for a poor sports performance.
Passing the blame onto yoga was “quite out of line”, according to Hindu statesman Rajan Zed, who lives in Nevada in the USA.
Mr Zed, who is president of the Universal Society of Hinduism, said Keane needed to “wake up” and re-incorporate yoga into his life.
“He was clearly doing a disservice to himself if not fully availing the valuable opportunities yoga provided,” Mr Zed said in a statement.
The Hindu leader also pointed out that President Michael D Higgins has previously said he would like to see yoga taught in schools across Ireland.
He added that although yoga was introduced and nourished by Hinduism, it is now a “world heritage and liberation powerhouse”, which should be used by everyone.
Keane has previously spoken about how yoga benefitted his career.
In 2005, he told the Manchester Evening News that he and his Manchester United teammates were doing yoga frequently: “Myself, Giggsy and David Bellion do it and I think it has been a good help to us,” he said at the time.
“I think there is a couple of types of yoga, there is a yoga where you sit and meditate. It’s not that kind, it is the physically demanding stretching yoga, I think is has definitely helped me.”
The same year, he told The Irish Times he was doing yoga multiple times per week and it helped loosen his muscles and took pressure off his joints. “I don’t know whether it’s an Irish thing or just the time I came up in, but I never stretched,” he said.
However, in a 2014 interview with the Irish Examiner, he seemed to blame yoga for some injuries he acquired while playing soccer.
“I done yoga when I was a player and strangely enough I don’t think it helped me that much. I think it probably led to some of my injuries,” he said.