![\"Roy](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/fd37cd81-8b75-4983-89d4-aacbad0e3006.jpg\")
<\/p>\nRoy Valk admitted that the Cork midfielder – whom he had just painted with a beard – asked whether his hair was really that grey, as he studied the mural.<\/p>\n
The artist – who paints all restaurants in the Dutch-founded Fat Phill’s chain – was completing a mural on a building facing their new restaurant on Cook Street in Cork.<\/p>\n
“I was taking a photograph when a group of people came walking down the street,” Roy told RedFM’s Neil Prendeville. “They stopped to look at the mural and I asked them to keep moving because of the photos I was taking.”<\/p>\n
Roy looked up from the camera viewfinder when he heard laughter – and found himself staring at the footballer legend whose image he had just painted.<\/p>\n
“Don’t you recognise me?” the Ireland star joked.<\/p>\n
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The Dutch artist had a brief chat before the footballer said he had to leave to attend a meeting, vowing to come back for a longer chat.<\/p>\n
“He came back about 30 minutes later and we got a photograph taken,” the artist explained. “He was very nice and said he liked the mural.”<\/p>\n
While Roy had painted the former Manchester United captain with his trademark beard, the footballer was clean-shaven when he met him on Cook Street by the diner.<\/p>\n
“He did look a lot younger,” he admitted.<\/p>\n
The mural has since become a major attraction in Cork with people getting their photographs taken beside it.<\/p>\n
While he has produced celebrity paintings and murals before, he has never had such a reaction as that to his Roy Keane mural.<\/p>\n
Fat Phill’s – which is being developed in the former Caf\u00e9 Noir premises in Cork city centre – is scheduled to open soon.<\/p>\n
A street art project has also seen numerous images of ‘Keano’ appear on everything from electricity junction boxes to walls across Cork city centre.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Roy Keane with Roy Valk.<\/p>\n
News in 90 seconds – Friday, March 6 <\/p>\n
The Mayfield-born star is now one of the UK’s top football pundits, earning critical praise for his no-nonsense commentaries and willingness to criticise teams with the same no-holds-barred approach he brought to his former midfield duties in the 1990s and 2000s.<\/p>\n
He started his career with Rockmount in Cork before signing for Cobh Ramblers.<\/p>\n
The midfielder was then signed by Brian Clough’s Nottingham Forest and broke the British transfer record when he signed for Manchester United in 1993.<\/p>\n
He captained Manchester United to virtually every honour in the game before switching to Celtic.<\/p>\n
Roy Keane managed Sunderland and Ipswich in England before working as assistant manager with Martin O’Neill for the Republic of Ireland and helping them qualify for Euro 2016 in France.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Roy Valk admitted that the Cork midfielder – whom he had just painted with a beard – asked…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":332750,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,898,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-332749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-latest-news-ticker","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332749","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=332749"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332749\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/332750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=332749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=332749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=332749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}