Keanely missed

More talented individuals have worn green in the past but none could claim to have delivered on the biggest days so often. From battling the Italians in Giants Stadium in one era to Lansdowne Road against the Dutch in another, the more significant the fixture the better Keane played. There was such consistency to his brilliance that eventually and perhaps inevitably, it was taken for granted.
So many times in the past fortnight people mentioned how Mick McCarthy carved out key competitive victories over Croatia, Yugoslavia and the Netherlands with much the same players who were failing Brian Kerr. To say this was to ignore a salient point. Those matches were won because in the prime of his career, Keane was able to drag a very ordinary bunch of footballers along in his wake. As one of his Irish teammates once confessed, the minute he walked into the team hotel, they suddenly started believing no matter who the opposition victory was suddenly achievable.
His loss will be incalculable. Even as a pale imitation of his former self, he was Ireland’s most influential player in the defeat by France. On its own, that statement sums up how much trouble the national team is in. By now, Damien Duff should have succeeded him as the most influential Irish player of this generation. He hasn’t because opposing teams these days prepare to counter his threat and playing for Chelsea has had a stifling impact on his natural creativity that lit up the 2002 World Cup. After that, there’s such a vacuum of leadership that Keane’s latest retirement (and he has become a bit of a Sinatra in this respect) put the tin hat on one awful week.
It’s truly depressing when Brian Kerr’s performance on “The Late Late Show” last Friday night contained more passion and commitment than anything demonstrated by his team in their last two games. The manager capped off an undistinguished campaign by picking a bizarre team to face the Swiss and failing to change it around even though things were very obviously not going to plan. Managers earn their pay on the sideline during matches by making tough decisions that change the course of events. Kerr is too reluctant to tinker, very often making changes too late to have a serious influence on proceedings, and this conservatism will very likely have cost him his job.
How ironic that his continued faith in Tottenham’s Robbie Keane may have contributed so hugely to Kerr’s downfall. Keane shouldn’t have started last Wednesday’s game. Nothing he’d done in the past two matches merited a start and yet again, there was proof he cannot score against the better sides. His supporters lament his treatment at Spurs and cite the tens of millions of pounds various clubs have spent on his signature as proof of his talent. More and more, that’s beginning to look like evidence there are people in the game with far more money than sense.
What’s happened at international and club level in recent months is that Keane has been found out. Stop me if you think you’ve heard this one before but he’s not world-class. He never was and at this stage of his career, it’s fair to assume he never will be. He’s a half-decent striker whose game has barely developed since he engendered so much teenage promise at Wolves. Ireland’s all-time leading goalscorer has now struck 16 times in competitive internationals but 10 of those goals have come against Malta (three), the Faroe Islands (two) Cyprus (a penalty), Albania, Georgia, Saudi Arabia, and Iran.
Against the better sides, he’s a long shot to find the net. This is borne out, too, by his record at club level. On New Year’s Day, Keane scored the fourth goal in Tottenham’s 5-2 victory over Everton. That was the only strike he managed against a top five team last season. The year before, a last-minute penalty against Arsenal marked his lone success against any of the top five. The season before that, he was completely scoreless against the best five in the division, and in the campaign leading into the World Cup in 2002, he didn’t make the score-sheet once in matches against teams that finished in the top half of the table.
Of course it’s more difficult to score against the superior outfits but if he’s as good as some have claimed him to be, surely he’d be scoring more often than that. Keane is symptomatic of the way every Irish footballer is over-hyped, their actual ability exaggerated so much that the nation is collectively shocked at any subsequent failure by the team. Truth is there is something much bigger at issue here than Brian Kerr’s shortcomings or Keane’s failures against good defenders.
The first-touch of the Irish players against the Swiss was frighteningly bad. It would be easy to blame the Lansdowne Road pitch except the visitors didn’t appear to have any issues with controlling the ball. As is usual when continental teams come to Dublin, their technique under pressure was far superior to almost all the Irish. Like so many sides before, the Swiss appeared on first-name terms with a ball that too often seemed like a foreign object to John O’Shea, Steve Carr et al.
This is the price we pay for exporting our most talented kids to England every year. They develop in a hot-house system that prizes competitiveness over skill. We often hear talk of the FAI working to offer an alternative to youngsters than taking the well-worn path to London, Liverpool and Manchester. Any such option must not just be about keeping them in Ireland a couple of years longer; it should be designed to have them in a coaching set-up where technique matters above else. Otherwise, infuriating performances like the last two are going to be more and more commonplace.