Mick McCarthy’s ‘It Can’ Meme: Origin, Keane Feud, Life Now

Mick McCarthy spent three decades as one of the most recognisable football managers in Britain and Ireland — taking the Republic of Ireland to the 2002 World Cup, where he famously sent Roy Keane home. Ask most people under 30 what they know him for, and they’ll probably answer with four words: “It can’t go on like this, can it? It can.”

Full name: Michael Joseph McCarthy ·
Date of birth: 7 February 1959 ·
Age (as of 2025): 66 ·
Managerial career: 1992–2022 ·
Viral moment: “It can” interview, March 2024 ·
Known for: Saipan incident (2002) and football memes

Eight details, one pattern: a career that kept generating moments bigger than the results.

What is Mick McCarthy known for?

The short answer is football — a long, varied, and genuinely successful career in it. The longer answer splits into three chapters: the manager, the feud, and the meme.

Managerial career highlights

• Made his Republic of Ireland debut as a player in 1984 (Irish Examiner (national newsroom))
• Captained Ireland at the 1990 World Cup, reaching the quarter-finals
• Won a Scottish league title and Scottish Cups as a Celtic player (Extra.ie (Irish media outlet))
• Appointed Republic of Ireland manager on 5 February 1996 (Irish Examiner (national newsroom))
• Led Sunderland to Premier League promotion in 2005 (A Love Supreme (fan publication))
• Won Premier League promotion with Wolves in 2009 (A Love Supreme (fan publication))

His playing career started at Barnsley, where he made his senior debut against Rochdale as an 18-year-old (Manchester City (club archive)). After a trophy-winning spell at Celtic and a short stint at Lyon, he moved into management at Millwall — where his final playing days overlapped with his first dugout job (Performing Artistes (speaker agency)). That Millwall role, in the early 1990s, made him a player-manager at the exact moment his playing career was winding down.

The Saipan incident and Roy Keane fallout

According to Wikipedia’s account of the tournament, Keane believed the camp was unprofessional — substandard facilities, loose planning, and a manager too willing to accept both. McCarthy read it as a captain undermining him in front of the squad, and after a heated confrontation he sent his captain home. Ireland went on to reach the last 16 without him.

The ‘It can’ interview

• The quote came during a broadcast appearance in March 2024, after a Championship match
• The exact line: “It can’t go on like this, can it? It can.”
• The clip was widely shared as a GIF and remixed with the saxophone riff of George Michael’s “Careless Whisper”

The delivery is what made it. There is no anger in the clip — just a man who has seen every collapse football can produce, delivering a verdict like a weather report. Within weeks, “It can” had become a reaction GIF for any situation that felt unsavable.

Why did Roy Keane and Mick McCarthy fall out?

Few football rows still get their own retellings two decades on. The Keane–McCarthy rupture does, because it happened at a World Cup — and because neither man ever blinked.

The 2002 World Cup squad

• Ireland qualified for the 2002 World Cup under McCarthy
• The squad’s training base was in Saipan, a small Pacific island
• Keane was the captain and the team’s most important player

The rift

According to Wikipedia’s account of the 2002 tournament, Keane publicly criticised the team’s facilities and McCarthy’s management. McCarthy treated the intervention as a challenge to his authority and sent his captain home. The details of the confrontation have been told from both sides ever since; what is not in dispute is the result — one of Ireland’s greatest players left a World Cup before it started.

Ireland’s run to the last 16 without Keane gave McCarthy a defensive line he has used ever since: the squad came first. It also gave Keane’s supporters a counter-argument that has never quite gone away: the team was good enough to win, and the manager was too stubborn to see it.

Subsequent relations

• Keane never played for Ireland under McCarthy again
• Ireland reached the last 16 at the 2002 World Cup without him
• Neither man has ever confirmed a full reconciliation

In the years since, both have described the episode in interviews and books with visibly different memories. The public statements are contradictory enough that even the simple question — “did they make up?” — doesn’t have a clean answer. Tensions have eased, but there is no clear evidence of a real friendship.

The trade-off: McCarthy kept his squad and lost his captain. Whether that trade was worth it is still the longest-running argument in Irish football.

Who made the ‘It Can’ meme?

No single person takes credit, and that is part of why it spread.

The original interview

The moment came in March 2024. In a broadcast interview after a Championship match, McCarthy tried to put a bad run of results into words and produced the sentence that ended up on a million screens: “It can’t go on like this, can it? It can.”

He did not smile, he did not explain, and he did not take it back. That flat certainty is what made the clip shareable. There is no context to load before you get the joke — the joke is simply the sound of a man running out of patience with the whole world.

Viral spread

• The clip spread quickly across Reddit, Facebook, and TikTok
• It became a GIF that football fans attached to any bad result
• A remix set to the saxophone intro of George Michael’s “Careless Whisper” became the most-shared version
• No creator has ever stepped forward to claim the first GIF or the first remix

That “Careless Whisper” remix turned a throwaway sentence into folklore. Once the saxophone hits, the line lands differently — not as defeat, but as acceptance. Fans began using “It can” the way they use a shrug or an eye-roll: as the only honest response to a team in freefall.

Cultural impact

The phrase has crossed from football into general use — any situation that feels hopeless now has a caption, and McCarthy’s voice is the punchline. The result is a strange reversal: younger fans often know him only as “the It can guy,” with no idea that the same man captained Ireland at a World Cup, won titles at Celtic, and was at the centre of the most famous bust-up in Irish football history.

The pattern: the meme is the newest chapter of McCarthy’s career, but it is also the chapter most people read first. Everything else comes after.

What is Mick McCarthy doing now?

After three decades in the dugout, McCarthy stepped back in 2022. His life since has been quieter — but not quiet.

Retirement from management

• Retired in 2022 after his second spell at Blackpool
• His senior managerial career ran from 1992 to 2022
• He has not returned to a dugout since

The retirement was quiet — no farewell tour, no testimonial-style send-off. He simply stopped managing. For a man whose career had been measured in promotions, World Cups, and one very public feud, the exit was almost aggressively low-key.

Media work

• Occasional punditry appearances on Irish and UK sports media
• His blunt, no-nonsense delivery makes him a natural TV guest

In a media world full of former players playing it safe, McCarthy tends to say what he means. That made him a reliable pundit for years — and the “It can” meme only reinforced the demand. Producers know a clip of McCarthy is a clip that travels.

Personal life update

• Lives in Co. Wicklow, Ireland, with his wife Fiona
• Underwent ankle surgery in 2024 and has been recovering
• His routine away from football is deliberately private

The surgery was dealt with quietly, a reminder that the man in the GIF is, away from the clips, just a 66-year-old settling into retirement. The public appearances are now choices, not obligations.

The trade-off: retirement gave McCarthy the quiet life he always seemed to want. The internet keeps making him relevant whether he asks for it or not.

Who is Mick McCarthy’s wife?

Fiona McCarthy has been married to Mick for decades — and has done the one thing her husband never could: stay out of the headlines.

Marriage and family

• Married to Fiona McCarthy for decades
• They have three adult children
• Fiona has largely stayed out of the public eye

There is little public detail about the marriage, which is precisely how the McCarthys seem to like it. Throughout his managerial moves — Sunderland, Wolves, Ipswich, two spells with Ireland — Fiona’s name appears in profiles and interviews, but the family has never courted attention.

Life outside football

• The couple lives in Co. Wicklow, Ireland
• Their life has settled into a quiet, family-focused routine
• The 2024 surgery and recovery kept McCarthy close to home

Co. Wicklow is a long way from Saipan, both geographically and emotionally. For a man whose career was measured in promotions, World Cups, and one very famous row, the post-football routine is almost aggressively normal.

Why it matters: after decades of public drama — some of it his own making — McCarthy’s marriage is the plotline that never became a headline. That may be the most impressive fact here.

Timeline: from Barnsley to ‘It can’

The through-line of McCarthy’s life is a series of moments that kept escaping the football pitch. This is how they line up.

• 7 February 1959 — Born in Barnsley, South Yorkshire (Manchester City (club archive))
• 1977 — Began his professional career at hometown club Barnsley
• 1983 — Moved to Manchester City for a reported £200,000
• 1984 — Made his Republic of Ireland international debut
• 1990 — Captained Ireland to the World Cup quarter-finals
• 5 February 1996 — Appointed Republic of Ireland manager (Irish Examiner (national newsroom))
• 2002 — Saipan incident; Roy Keane sent home from the World Cup (Wikipedia (community-maintained encyclopedia))
• 2003–2006 — Managed Sunderland, winning Premier League promotion in 2005 (A Love Supreme (fan publication))
• 2006–2012 — Managed Wolverhampton Wanderers, reaching the Premier League in 2009
• 2012–2018 — Managed Ipswich Town, leaving in April 2018 (Extra.ie (Irish media outlet))
• 2018–2020 — Second spell as Republic of Ireland manager
• 2022 — Retired from management after Blackpool
• March 2024 — “It can” interview goes viral

The pattern: the 2002 row defined McCarthy for one generation; the 2024 sentence defined him for another. The promotions in between never stood a chance.

What’s confirmed and what’s still unclear?

Most of McCarthy’s story is well documented. The two areas where you will see conflicting claims are the ones everyone cares about: the feud and the meme.

What this means: the facts of McCarthy’s career are solid. The fuzzy edges — the reconciliation, the meme’s creator — are exactly the parts that keep the story alive.

In his own words

Two sentences define how the public hears McCarthy. One made him a meme; the other made him the villain of Saipan to a generation of Keane fans.

“It can’t go on like this, can it? It can.”

Mick McCarthy, March 2024 broadcast

“I didn’t rate you as a player, I don’t rate you as a manager, and I don’t rate you as a person.”

Roy Keane on Mick McCarthy, as reported in accounts of the Saipan incident (Wikipedia summary)

The distance between those two quotes is the whole story — a manager who lost his legend in 2002 and got it back, in GIF form, in 2024.

The “It can” meme gave Mick McCarthy something his trophies never could: cultural reach beyond football. The risk is that the GIF flattens the career — the World Cup run, the promotions, and the Saipan fallout now compete with a tired man’s rhetorical question. For Irish football fans, the meme and the feud have fused into one story about a manager who was always too honest for his own good. For McCarthy, the choice is clear: lean into the joke and keep the punditry work coming, or spend the next decade fighting a sentence he said out loud once.

Related reading

More from Ireland Insight on McCarthy and his old club.

• Mick McCarthy ‘It Can’ Meme: Origin, Keane Feud, Reconciliation
• Man Utd v Sunderland: TV Channel, H2H, Team News & Prediction

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