Cascarino Article on Robbie Keane
Keane becoming a benchmark
By Tony Cascarino
YOU START TO wonder if Robbie Keane will ever hold down a first-team place at a top club. It’s a strange question because he’s a highly talented 25-year-old who is Ireland’s record goalscorer and has commanded £38 million in transfer fees in his career already. And I had a strange reaction when I watched him come on and score the winner for Tottenham Hotspur against Charlton Athletic on Saturday: Robbie, you can’t keep doing this.
Let me explain. Before one Ireland game, we held the usual team meeting. Niall Quinn was injured. I was thinking: “Bad for Quinny, but great for me. I’m certain to come back in.” Jack Charlton went through the team and I wasn’t in it. One or two of the players asked him: “Why not start Cas?” Jack was dead against the idea. “I don’t want to do that — he can win us games coming off the bench,” he said. I was put out, so I approached him and said: “I’m not being funny, but me for Quinny seems a perfect switch.” Jack’s response was flattering and insulting. “Every time I play you off the bench you’re brilliant. You change games and cause problems,” he said. “When I start you, you’re crap.”
After that I knew I had a big problem. The die was cast — I had become a 20-minute man, a supersub. I hated it. The lads would take the mickey because I would do my warm-up exercises in front of Jack during games to remind him that I was there, ready, willing and able. Weird, though: even if my mind never accepted substitute life, my body did. At Chelsea and Celtic, where I was in and out of the team, I became physically suited to life as a sub. I would be energetic and lively when I came on, but when I did start the odd game, I was soon knackered.
My fitness had dropped. I was like a boxer who could last only three rounds. It was a vicious circle. Playing for 20 minutes meant I played badly whenever I played 90, which meant I would soon be back to playing for 20 minutes again. I saw Robbie start for Ireland against France last month and he was lacking sharpness. I attribute that to an absence of full-match fitness. Even though you train all week, it makes a huge difference if you don’t play much come the weekend.
At the age of 31, I turned my career around. Fear and anger did it. Fear that I would drop down the divisions and fade away, anger that everyone saw me as a supersub, a bit-part player, when I wanted to be much more. So I devised my own training regime: working alone in a park, doing exercises to simulate playing for 90 minutes, recovering my focus and stamina.
I never won over Jack Charlton. He preferred to start Niall. We developed a standing joke just before matches: as Quinny was about to take the field, I’d say: “See you at twenty past four.” I came on for him so often that after the qualifiers for the 1994 World Cup finals, under our bonus scheme I was entitled to the same amount of money as the lads who’d played 90 minutes of every game. Much to their amusement or, possibly, bemusement.
More important than convincing Jack, I proved a point to myself. The final seven years of my career in France, I started week in, week out. Robbie has done so well off the bench, I wonder if Martin Jol would want to sell him. But before long — three months, maybe six, no more — Robbie will be at a crossroads. Satisfaction at being a 20-minute success story does not quell the burning frustration at being a spectator for the other 70 minutes.
But the energising rage I felt, the emotion he must feel, does not last indefinitely. Either it burns out and you accept your lot, or you do something to change it. In Robbie’s case, that may mean a move away from White Hart Lane. In mine, it was a summer of sweat in that park that transformed my career. There are few things of which I’m prouder.
