ROBBIE KEANE IS currently 14th on the list of all-time Premier League top scorers.
Without his considerable contribution, it seems unlikely that Ireland would have qualified for the 2002 World Cup or Euro 2012, let alone starred in the former, without him.
By the age of 17, he had already made his debut at Wolves. As then-manager of the club Mark McGhee later recalled:
“We were going north on a tour to play some games so I took him with us and, by the time we came back, it was even more obvious he was our best player.
“So I had phoned ahead to tell the club to prepare a contract — not the usual ones you give to 16-year-olds but one that would take him through until he was 19.
“And then, by the end of pre-season, I was asking them to give him another one!
“By the start of the season I had decided he was going to play.
“He made his debut at Norwich and we won 2-0. He scored both goals. And at the end of the game, I phoned the club again and said: “Get another contract ready”.
“So Robbie signed three different contracts in the space of three months. He was brilliant — he still is.”
And yet, there is tendency to talk down Keane’s career in certain quarters, while he had a number of doubters.
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He never endeared himself to Rafa Benitez at Liverpool, with Fernando Torres the main striker, and Keane invariably either played out of position or left on the bench amid a fleeting six-month spell at the club.
Another Ireland legend, John Giles, once asserted that as naturally gifted as Keane was, his game would benefit from the guidance of a really top-class coach.
There were also suggestions that Alex Ferguson did not rate a young Keane especially highly, though the legendary Man United boss later clarified these supposed remarks in an interview with the Irish Times.
“I did a dinner to help out a lad in Blackpool,” he said. “At the end they wanted to ask a few questions and one asked: `why do you not sign Robbie Keane?’ I said: `Well, for a start I should have signed him when my son told me to, when he was only 16. Darren [Ferguson's son, then with Wolves] told me all about him.
“Now, by the time we came to watch him he was in the first team at 17. The way we operate is that if I am going to pay £6 million for a player I want to play him in my first team. Now there is no way Robbie Keane would get in my first team over Yorke, Cole, Sheringham or Solskjaer. So £6 million to me at the moment is a waste of money.
If I was getting him for £100,000 and leaving him in the reserves for a couple of years – the way we do with a lot of young players like Jonathan Greening – yeah, that’s the way it works for us. But for us to pay £6 million for an 18-year-old lad and play him in the reserves is out of the question.’
“That’s exactly the way I answered it. But there was a freelance reporter at the dinner and he sold it in a different context. I could have sued but there was no point.”
In his early days though, there was a genuine worry that Keane would not fulfill his obvious potential.
After Coventry paid £6 million to make him the most expensive teenager in British football at the time, his superb form with the Sky Blues prompted Inter to pay more than double that fee for his services.
Keane was briefly team-mates Brazilian superstar Ronaldo. EMPICS Sport
EMPICS Sport
It was in Serie A, however, after a meteoric rise, that the star’s career hit its first real speed bump. Keane scored just three goals in 14 appearances amid a turbulent time at the club. Marcello Lippi, the man who signed the Irishman, was sacked, and his successor, Marco Tardelli — who would later coach Keane in the Irish set-up — considered him surplus to requirements. With the benefit of hindsight, the move appeared doomed to failure from the outset. Going to Italy for an Irish youngster, no matter how talented, is difficult in itself, but especially when the individual in question is competing for a spot up front along with Hakan Şükür, Christian Vieri, Álvaro Recoba, Ronaldo and Iván Zamorano.
The competition was similarly tough at Leeds, with likes of Robbie Fowler, Mark Viduka, Alan Smith and Michael Bridges vying for a place in attack.
It is no surprise, however, that Keane struggled for consistency amid this turbulent environment at the debt-ridden club. Again, he didn’t stay long there and the young forward made his fourth move in three years, as he began to gain a reputation as somewhat of a footballing vagabond.
But, to paraphrase his distant relative, Morrissey, he was looking for a job and then he found a job — it turned out to be helping turn Tottenham from an average Premier League side into one on the cusp of the Champions League. Before Keane joined, Spurs had finished ninth the previous season and never came higher than seventh in the Premier League era. His presence in the team played a big part in helping them improve significantly, and they came fifth in two of his last three seasons at the club.
Congratulations on a fantastic playing career Robbie Keane! 👏
Keane brought a level of reliability that Tottenham patently lacked previously — he was the first Spurs player to score double figures in six consecutive seasons. 2007 was arguably the peak of his career, as he managed a phenomenal 31 goals and 13 assists from 40 starts, registering more goals than Cristiano Ronaldo and any other Premier League player in that calendar year. To achieve such consistency, particularly for a club who were always finishing outside the top four at that point, is a remarkable feat.
The Dubliner was doubted too when he went to LA Galaxy, but in contrast with the Liverpool, Inter and Leeds mishaps, it proved an astute move. He won three MLS Cups, eclipsing what other Premier League greats such as Thierry Henry, Didier Drogba and Frank Lampard managed to do over there, and being talked of, on more than one occasion, as the greatest signing in the league’s history.
Yet still it feels as if Keane is underappreciated by some, particularly in Ireland.
The arguments though, rarely, if ever, stack up. In his early days, critics described him as “a scorer of great goals rather than a great goalscorer” — a claim he blew out of the water, with the various record-breaking achievements for his country and elsewhere.
Naysayers suggested that, at international level, Keane “only did it against the small teams,” which conveniently ignores goals against Holland, Germany, France, Spain and Croatia among others.
More recently too, there have been those who have objected to his presence in the new Irish management set-up. It is fair to suggest there are others out there with more experience and qualifications for the role, and great footballers do not necessarily transfer those skills into coaching.
But Mick McCarthy, having given Keane his Ireland debut as a teenager and managed him for several years, knows better than most what the Tallaght native can offer on and off the field. And while the jury remains out on whether he can succeed on the sidelines, he has certainly made those who underestimated him in the past look very foolish, and this time around may be no different.
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Is Robbie Keane underrated?
ROBBIE KEANE IS currently 14th on the list of all-time Premier League top scorers.
Without his considerable contribution, it seems unlikely that Ireland would have qualified for the 2002 World Cup or Euro 2012, let alone starred in the former, without him.
By the age of 17, he had already made his debut at Wolves. As then-manager of the club Mark McGhee later recalled:
“We were going north on a tour to play some games so I took him with us and, by the time we came back, it was even more obvious he was our best player.
“So I had phoned ahead to tell the club to prepare a contract — not the usual ones you give to 16-year-olds but one that would take him through until he was 19.
“And then, by the end of pre-season, I was asking them to give him another one!
“By the start of the season I had decided he was going to play.
“He made his debut at Norwich and we won 2-0. He scored both goals. And at the end of the game, I phoned the club again and said: “Get another contract ready”.
“So Robbie signed three different contracts in the space of three months. He was brilliant — he still is.”
And yet, there is tendency to talk down Keane’s career in certain quarters, while he had a number of doubters.
He never endeared himself to Rafa Benitez at Liverpool, with Fernando Torres the main striker, and Keane invariably either played out of position or left on the bench amid a fleeting six-month spell at the club.
Another Ireland legend, John Giles, once asserted that as naturally gifted as Keane was, his game would benefit from the guidance of a really top-class coach.
There were also suggestions that Alex Ferguson did not rate a young Keane especially highly, though the legendary Man United boss later clarified these supposed remarks in an interview with the Irish Times.
“I did a dinner to help out a lad in Blackpool,” he said. “At the end they wanted to ask a few questions and one asked: `why do you not sign Robbie Keane?’ I said: `Well, for a start I should have signed him when my son told me to, when he was only 16. Darren [Ferguson's son, then with Wolves] told me all about him.
“Now, by the time we came to watch him he was in the first team at 17. The way we operate is that if I am going to pay £6 million for a player I want to play him in my first team. Now there is no way Robbie Keane would get in my first team over Yorke, Cole, Sheringham or Solskjaer. So £6 million to me at the moment is a waste of money.
“That’s exactly the way I answered it. But there was a freelance reporter at the dinner and he sold it in a different context. I could have sued but there was no point.”
In his early days though, there was a genuine worry that Keane would not fulfill his obvious potential.
After Coventry paid £6 million to make him the most expensive teenager in British football at the time, his superb form with the Sky Blues prompted Inter to pay more than double that fee for his services.
It was in Serie A, however, after a meteoric rise, that the star’s career hit its first real speed bump. Keane scored just three goals in 14 appearances amid a turbulent time at the club. Marcello Lippi, the man who signed the Irishman, was sacked, and his successor, Marco Tardelli — who would later coach Keane in the Irish set-up — considered him surplus to requirements. With the benefit of hindsight, the move appeared doomed to failure from the outset. Going to Italy for an Irish youngster, no matter how talented, is difficult in itself, but especially when the individual in question is competing for a spot up front along with Hakan Şükür, Christian Vieri, Álvaro Recoba, Ronaldo and Iván Zamorano.
The competition was similarly tough at Leeds, with likes of Robbie Fowler, Mark Viduka, Alan Smith and Michael Bridges vying for a place in attack.
It is no surprise, however, that Keane struggled for consistency amid this turbulent environment at the debt-ridden club. Again, he didn’t stay long there and the young forward made his fourth move in three years, as he began to gain a reputation as somewhat of a footballing vagabond.
But, to paraphrase his distant relative, Morrissey, he was looking for a job and then he found a job — it turned out to be helping turn Tottenham from an average Premier League side into one on the cusp of the Champions League. Before Keane joined, Spurs had finished ninth the previous season and never came higher than seventh in the Premier League era. His presence in the team played a big part in helping them improve significantly, and they came fifth in two of his last three seasons at the club.
Keane brought a level of reliability that Tottenham patently lacked previously — he was the first Spurs player to score double figures in six consecutive seasons. 2007 was arguably the peak of his career, as he managed a phenomenal 31 goals and 13 assists from 40 starts, registering more goals than Cristiano Ronaldo and any other Premier League player in that calendar year. To achieve such consistency, particularly for a club who were always finishing outside the top four at that point, is a remarkable feat.
The Dubliner was doubted too when he went to LA Galaxy, but in contrast with the Liverpool, Inter and Leeds mishaps, it proved an astute move. He won three MLS Cups, eclipsing what other Premier League greats such as Thierry Henry, Didier Drogba and Frank Lampard managed to do over there, and being talked of, on more than one occasion, as the greatest signing in the league’s history.
Yet still it feels as if Keane is underappreciated by some, particularly in Ireland.
The arguments though, rarely, if ever, stack up. In his early days, critics described him as “a scorer of great goals rather than a great goalscorer” — a claim he blew out of the water, with the various record-breaking achievements for his country and elsewhere.
Naysayers suggested that, at international level, Keane “only did it against the small teams,” which conveniently ignores goals against Holland, Germany, France, Spain and Croatia among others.
More recently too, there have been those who have objected to his presence in the new Irish management set-up. It is fair to suggest there are others out there with more experience and qualifications for the role, and great footballers do not necessarily transfer those skills into coaching.
But Mick McCarthy, having given Keane his Ireland debut as a teenager and managed him for several years, knows better than most what the Tallaght native can offer on and off the field. And while the jury remains out on whether he can succeed on the sidelines, he has certainly made those who underestimated him in the past look very foolish, and this time around may be no different.
Subscribe to our new podcast, Heineken Rugby Weekly on The42, here:
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Opinion Premier League Robbie Keane Ireland Republic Liverpool Tottenham Hotspur underrated