A centred forward ever keen to strike for home

Five clubs and one World Cup on, Robbie Keane of Tallaght and Irelandremains in touch with his roots, writes Tom Humphries

Five clubs and one World Cup on, Robbie Keane of Tallaght and Irelandremains in touch with his roots, writes Tom Humphries

You've only got half the sentence out before he's laughing. Yeah, he says, thanks very much for that.

You start again.

Now that you're getting older . . .

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He laughs. Twenty three he says. Wait till I'm twenty four. I might retire. Older! He knows what you mean though. It seems like forever since Robbie Keane began darting at goalmouths the way moths fly towards lamplight. A few weeks ago Freddie Kanoute was leafing through a match programme and looked up at Robbie Keane in alarm.

"Says here you were born in 1980" said Freddie "That's right" said Robbie.

"But you must be at least 26." "No. Twenty three." "Seems like you've been around so long." "Seems like donkeys alright" said Robbie.

Donkeys. A journey from Fettercairn to Wolves to Coventry to Inter Milan to Leeds to Spurs. You could make every kind of assumption about that journey. The money. The fame. The business of beginning as a boy and ending as a man. Being Whacker.

Becoming Keano.

You'd be wrong though. He's not the person you thought he would be. That first electrifying apotheosis when he manifested himself on the Wolves first team and scored goal of the season contenders for the first couple of weeks made you suspicious.

He's a contender. You thought he'd be a casualty.

He'd burn out and be back in the League of Ireland in time to be the answer to a trivia question. You'd seen dozens of them.

Worse. He'd crash and burn in a fireball of hype, injuries and badly handled fame. A lighter version of Keith O'Neill perhaps.

Or maybe he'd live off his prodigious beginning for a while, an Andy Turner cum Mark Kennedy type of life, always moving onto a "new challenge" in the hope of recovering lost glory.

You thought maybe you'd pick up the paper one day years hence and see his name filling out the gaps in a non-league side in the third round of the FA Cup. Maybe he'd be interviewed on Match of the Day , hardly a trace of Dublin accent left, the journeyman pro with the big future behind him.

Whatever. You thought the machine would eat him. The glory would madden him. The money would corrupt him.

These kids, they get marooned on a sea of fame and they lean out and drink in the salty water till it makes them mad. Too much, too young.

There's a story you've heard about him a dozen times. A story about Cyprus when the Under 18s won the European title. The boys celebrated in their routine way. Robbie Keane got his hands on a motorcycle and scorched the island till near dawn, the occasional fully throttled sonic boom his signature on the night. Urban myth it turns out. Never happened he says. Pity though, sounds like a good story. Better than just having a sing song.

So it never happened. Yet it seemed to fit the idea of him and his genius which he was too young to spend well.

Well, this is a good week to talk to him. In the background the Premiership lies in steaming mounds of scandal and disgrace. Casualties all round. Every day a new geyser of disillusion bursts forth into the sky. Drug tests and "roastings" and player mutinies and millionaire takeovers. There's a great canyon of understanding between the young and prematurely wealthy on one side and the real world on the other.

It would be sycophancy to say that Keane straddles the divide - enough to say that in his own life he has made sure that there is no divide. He hasn't left the world behind. He was at home in Tallaght last weekend, in Fettercairn and he stayed in his sister's house, around the corner from his Mam's house. He pulled up in the car and as usual like magnet filings a hundred kids appeared from nowhere.

He's too familiar to be hero worshipped, too much of a novelty to be dismissed entirely. So they do what he would have done. They have a laugh.

"Give us your autograph then." "Where's your pen and paper and I'll give it to you." "Have you not got pen and paper as well?" "What do ya take me for?"

And in the summer when he gets home for longer he goes out onto the greens and the streets and kicks around with them a bit, nothing too strenuous in case a bright spark kicks his ankles off in a fit of enthusiasm. It reminds him of the days coming in, flinging the schoolbag in the hall and speeding back out before any questions could be asked about homework.

Reminds him and keeps him in touch.

The long journey he has made hasn't changed the person he was at the beginning. He has left more marks along the way than the way has left on him. And every new experience adds to that.

This European qualifying campaign has been a chapter in itself. He returned from the Far East last summer, a 21-year-old who'd become the first Irishman with two World Cup goals under his belt. By autumn he'd been transferred out of Leeds, reluctant in a way but eager to be somewhere he was appreciated.

Then life accelerated. Moscow. The debacle of the Swiss visit at Lansdowne. Disappointment at Mick McCarthy's banishment alleviated by the arrival of his old mentor Brian Kerr. And then in the spring the loss of his father, Robbie Snr.

These things didn't change him. Just made him more of what he is.

"It made me stronger. A lot of things have happened since the World Cup. I'm used to moving around, moving house and moving club and that, so there was nothing different there but things have happened. It's been a long year and losing my Da was the hardest thing. I've never lost someone close like that. It was horrible, not just for me but for the family as well." His Dad never played football, what he passed on to Robbie was a love of music and singing and a little bit of attitude. Football only interested Robbie Keane senior when his son was playing.

The cancer finally took him just before the two-legged away trip to Georgia and Albania. Robbie stayed in Fettercairn with his grieving family for the first half of that trip, flew to Tirana for the second half. Football was always going to reclaim him.

"You don't think about football as much when something like that happens. For the first few weeks it's hard, it's very hard. You get some time off though and you want to get back into the routine. You have to go on. It's already in perspective for you, you

realise family is more important than anything else. I went to Albania and when I got back from there I scored four goals in four games. I don't know why that would be. When it first happened football seemed far away but you get on with your life."

Albania had a raw edge for him, playing that windy night against the muscular home side, his mind wasn't his own. Grief vacuumed up the air around him.

"It got to be that there were times in the game when I was playing and it kept popping in my head. Da. What he would be saying and thinking. It was something he would have wanted me to do though. That was important to him, thinking of me being there for the family was important. Playing for the country, putting on the jersey that was important to him and to the family . . . I can't sit here and say it was easy. It was hard. It was a hard night. "

He's surprised to be asked about it but in the context of the time and the conversation it seems natural. Could he ever imagine himself walking away from international football out of frustration or pique or self preservation.

"I suppose I'm not that sort of person," he says, non-judgmentally. "I just get on with things. I don't get worked up. I'm happy enough just to be playing football. If I get beaten on a Saturday it wrecks my weekend. I'm miserable on the phone to the girlfriend. It's horrible.

"The other side is that I dreamed of playing for Ireland when I was a kid. It's something that you don't throw away easy. The kid you were, what you dreamed of. That's always stuck in my head. I love putting the jersey on. I know the family love it, love seeing me. That's enough."

Out of Saipan and beyond he travelled lightly, bringing nothing but friends.

"I like the scene. I played against Steve Staunton last week, had a bit of a chat. Quinny, I give him a ring sometimes and hammer him down the phone. He's good for that. I've got a few friends out of the experience that I'll always speak to for the rest of my life."

And Roy? Any dark whispers during games? "Not at all. It's the usual with Roy after games. Shake hands, wish the best and get on with it."

It all seems so long ago to him these days. Bigger things lie in between now and then. His mourning isn't done yet, not a day goes by that he doesn't think about Dad. He has no regrets to carry about . . . The way it finished for his Dad was in keeping with the neat nature of Robbie Keane Jnr's career. He does things right.

"The last game Da saw me play was against Everton. He saw me that day and I scored a hat-trick. That's a special memory for me. We played Everton the other day and I scored again. When I'd scored the three goals earlier in the year they were all scored into the same goal and Ma and Da were all in a box in the corner of the ground. When I scored last week I ran to the same place in front of the box. I was just full of memories."

Even the trademark goal celebration is a loyalty thing, a throwback to his days as a skinny teenager tormenting cloggers on behalf of Crumlin United. The somersault business looked flashy on Dublin parks. It looked flashy when he introduced it to the First Division and beyond. Now it seems almost quaint, the enduring trademark of quality.

This season he has had an increasing number of excuses for somersaulting exhibitions. His form and his finishing and his focus have seldom seemed better. His move to a fifth big club in as many years has begun to pay dividends.

"It's okay for me to say now that it was good to get out of Leeds, but the truth is I wanted to stay and play. Glenn (Hoddle), he had good faith in me and he played me all the time when I was fit. I scored a few goals for him. I didn't want to leave Leeds but I hate to be at a club match and sitting on the bench and picking up money. I love playing and training. If I'm not playing I'm not happy. No sense for me that the club was going the way it was. I needed to play. They needed money."

So he went down to Spurs for a couple of days and ended up signing.

"I just liked what they were offering and it seemed like I would get first-team football there. We have a great squad that's just not playing as well as we'd like to. We had a great result last Saturday and hopefully that'll be the start of a run.

"I'm happy there. I can't be the sort of player who just sits on the bench, trains and picks up a cheque."

Since then of course he has seen Glenn Hoddle get prodded along. A slight feeling of déjà vu there. Often in the past on his travels around football his arrival has been followed by domestic disturbance.

He was at home watching Sky when he learned that Hoddle was gone. Then the phone started ringing, but the whole experience of learning along with the rest of the world that the man who had signed him had just been sacked taught him something about the game he's in.

"I was sorry to see Glenn go. He bought me and he was loyal to me. I scored some goals for him. It's not nice when somebody gets the sack and in Glenn's case I respect him highly. You hear that he's gone and you don't know who to ring. You just find out at the same time as everyone else. That's football. At Leeds I would have liked to stay for a few years and got my game all the time. It didn't happen. Managers come and go. Somebody will come in and maybe he'll prefer somebody other than you. That's how it goes. It's nothing personal."

He settled quickly into a squad with which he was vaguely familiar anyway. Dean Richard he knew from Wolves back in the last century . . . Jamie Redknapp he's known for a few years. Then there were the Irish players. Steve Carr and Gary Doherty and the kids coming through. He never sounds older than when he speaks about young players.

"Steo Kelly is there with us at Spurs. Well he's gone to Watford for a while. And we have Mark Yates. Yatesy is a great little player. He has everything you need to make it. And he's a cheeky little so and so. He reminds me of meself when I was his age. He's a good young fella. I like him, I have good time for him. He'd be around the physio room bouncing about. Not cocky, just cheeky in a nice way.

"The lads get a good laugh out of him but they notice I'm very similar to him. They say I can imagine you at Yatesy's age. Yeah. I look at him and he reminds me of myself. The boys call him Little Keano."

Little Keano will learn that it's a simple life best kept that way. Keane has earned a fortune in his cut from transfer fees alone but it doesn't crowd his life at all.

He lives out in Hertfordshire, despises traffic, just goes to London for the shops occasionally and spends the rest of his time playing football, thinking about football or nipping home to Dublin.

Occasionally these days his mobile phone chirps text message. Always the same old caller. Brian Kerr. It's back to what he says about Hoddle, what he says about his own life. Professionals keep moving on.

"Mick McCarthy did a tremendous job for us and two games into the campaign he was gone. It wasn't nice. He gave me a chance when I was 17 and he always had a lot of faith in me. Even when I wasn't getting my game at Leeds. That happens sometimes though. You have to move on and be a professional about it."

He moved on and Brian Kerr resurfaced in his life. Here they are this weekend in Basel. "He's a good influence of course. Always has been. I've had him since I was young and he's someone who gets the best out of players. He's great. I've been through a lot with him and having him as senior manager is great.

"He texts you all the time.

"He texts all the lads. 'You alright?' 'How did you go today?' He has his ways. I switched on the phone after Russia beat Switzerland 4-1 and there he was, the score and a little message. 'You know what we have to do lads, we have to go and beat this shower.' You're somewhere in England and he gets you right up for it with a text message!"

And so at 23 he ends up here in Basel with the hopes of a nation resting on his shoulders. He carries it lightly, has done since he made his debut at 17 in that friendly against the Argentinians. Something about him has always elevated him to a status beyond his years.

Half a decade, a little more. Probably he's only one third of the way through an epic career at this point. Five clubs. You ask him about regrets. As he gets older is there anything he would change?

Now that you're getting older . . .

"Well, if I could have the power to bang in hundreds of goals a season, I'd be happy enough," he says with a smile.

Hundreds of goals a season. The dream is the last boyishness in him. Today the man goes to work. The bleak mathematics of a good pro's world tell him one goal will probably do.