ROBBIE IS STILL A GEM, INSISTS STRACHAN
Strachan lavishes praise on Ireland’s record goalscorer
It was either go to Inter Milan and Ronaldo or stay with Coventry City and Darren Huckerby. So he went
SO PRODIGIOUSLY talented was the 19-year-old Robbie Keane that Gordon Strachan only got to work with the emerging striker for a single season. Strachan knew that the £6million transfer which took Keane from Wolves to Coventry would be a mere staging post in the Dubliner’s career, but he could not have envisaged Italian giants Inter Milan doubling his club’s money within a year.
‘I told him he was just stopping off at us because he could go anywhere he wanted,’ recalls the Scotland manager. ‘I expected him to stay longer than nine months, right enough!
‘We doubled our money but I’d rather have kept him. But it was Inter Milan and Ronaldo or Coventry and Darren Huckerby. So he went.’
Fifteen years on Strachan knows the 137-times capped Keane still has the capacity to present a unique threat to his defence at Celtic Park on Friday night.
To put Keane’s potency into context, the 34-year-old has netted 65 times for the Ireland while the top scorer in the current Scotland squad, Darren Fletcher, has five to his name. Steven Fletcher, Strachan’s first-choice striker, has scored just once in 17 appearances.
Those who’d argue that Keane’s instincts have been blunted by age might well have a point – he’s now operating in the MLS with LA Galaxy for a reason – but it’s sobering to consider that in this Euro 2016 campaign he has already netted thrice.
His hat-trick may have been scored against Gibraltar, the minnows of Group D, but it would be entirely wrong to label him a flat-track bully. Keane scored against Germany and Spain at the 2002 World Cup Finals and that aforementioned 12-minute treble made him the record scorer in Euro qualifying history.
That he still retains the hunger to keep making those regular Transatlantic flights suggests there is a rare hunger and patriotism to go along with his talent.
‘Robbie has had to deal with being a top player since he was 19,’ continues Strachan. ‘It’s hard to keep that enthusiasm going with people looking at you. He’s been a leader for 16 years.’
Strachan was not the first member of Scotland’s coaching team to work with Keane. It was his assistant Mark McGhee who handed Keane his senior nior debut at Wolves in 1997 .
‘He is the same kid as he was when he was 17,’ says Strachan. ‘He was a gem of a kid to work with, an absolute gem. His ability and enthusiasm was always going to take him to the top. He loves the game. He’s not changed, honestly. . He’s got more intelligence but his actual game he’s still thinking quickly.
‘He’s a good player and a good man, I still see him now. We’ve had people with great applicationon but not as technically gifted as him.
HE LOVES the game and I’d imagine there’s nobody who has a bad word for him. He was quick. He was sharp. His movement, spinning in behind people. He was doing things that made me think “Who coached you that?”. I asked him but he told me “nobody”, it was just from watching people play.
‘I thought that was fantastic and hoped to claim the credit it for it somewhere down the line…’
That moment may well have come if Strachan had been able to persuade Dermot Desmond and Peter Lawwell to release the funds that would hav have made Keane a Celtic player in his prime.
‘I tried to get him to Celtic when he was at Liverpool or somewhere but we couldn’t manage it,’it he recalls. ‘It was just pleading! And then I realised that financially it couldn couldn’t be done. Which is fine. ‘He eventually got his dream of playing at Celtic later in his career.’ Keane pulled on a Celtic jersey at an unhappy point in the club’s history. Tony Mowbray was manager when Desmond and Lawwell brought the player to Glasgow on loan from Spurs in January 2010.
Although he played in both the 4-0 defeat St Mirren that effectively ended Mowbray’s reign and the 2-0 Cup semi-final defeat to Ross County, Keane played well, scoring 12 goals in 16 games.
After finishing at Spurs in 2011 he headed for California, where he joined David Beckham at Galaxy. Three years on, he remains unfazed by the travel and will wear the captain’s armband on his return to Parkhead this week where the task of halting him will likely fall to Strachan’s preferred partnership of Grant Hanley and Russell Martin.
That pair have come up against the likes of Thomas Muller and Mario Mandzukic over the past couple of seasons and Strachan warns that, although Keane seldom plays 90 minutes in green these days, he will merit the same level of attention throughout.
‘They cannot at any time fall asleep round about him,’ he insists. ‘He can lull you into feeling everything is all right here and then suddenly, whoosh, he’s away.’
At the opposite end to the pitch will be Steven Fletcher, who has hit a decent vein of scoring form at club level for Sunderland in the Premier League. He’s impressed in the three qualifiers to date too, laying on a superb assist for Ikechi Anya in Germany and also delivering the cross-field pass from which Anya set up Shaun Maloney in Poland.
Against Georgia he was also the link man, but Strachan admits it would be nice to see his preferred frontman score his first international goal since 2009.
‘Steven is not far away,’ he states. ‘He definitely has the intelligence, all he needs to do is add the goals that Robbie put together and then you have a terrific player.
‘He’s been out with a bad injury. It doesn’t take weeks to get over these things, it takes a bit of time. If you sign players just after cruciate ligament injuries it takes a wee bit longer, like Falcao at Manchester United.
IWATCHED Steven at training last time and thought ‘what a good player you are’. I don’t know if the fact Chris Martin is hanging about now is making him perform well. He’s helped with the goals and nearly got another assist for [Steven] Naismith against Georgia with his back-heel. There were 20-odd passes in that move, it was a lovely assist and Naisy will probably feel on a good day he scores.
‘Steven feels more confident and he feels fitter so that’s good. A goal would be great but if he keeps making assists that means we are scoring.’
Strachan might reflect that it would be nice to have a reliable finisher like Keane on the end of some of those chances.