Robbie Keane cares more about Ireland than himself.
Robbie Keane likes being the leader of the squad.
Robbie Keane likes roaring on his team so the country can achieve something special together.
Robbie Keane would even like to manage the Republic one day.
Not today.
Not on Friday.
Robbie Keane realises that the collective is more important than the one but it doesn’t mean for a second that he’s happy with a place on the bench.
He has goals in him – he’s proven that and he still is proving that.
And he wants to help his country on the pitch in Zenica on Friday and in Dublin on Monday. The pitch. Nowhere else.
“First and foremost, I’m a player and I still have a lot to offer,” Keane said after the team’s last training session in Abbotstown before departing for Bosnia. “I scored 20 goals in 24 games for Galaxy this year so it’s not like I’m kind of on my way out. I can still score goals and get the opportunities.
“As a captain, being around the squad for a long time, if you’re not playing games it is important that every player is ready and not sulking and getting behind the team because we’re all in it together.
“We started off a couple of years ago in this campaign as a group of players, with a togetherness about us, and we have to continue that way. For me, as the captain, I have to make sure that the players are ready. I’ll certainly be ready.”
With Shane Long still failing to take part in team training, Jon Walters suspended for the first leg and David McGoldrick missing the cut of 30 through injury, it looks increasingly likely that O’Neill could opt for just one up top on Friday evening.
That’s a role that Robbie Keane hasn’t often played in and even one he said before didn’t particularly suit his game. He wouldn’t turn it down though.
“Listen, I’ll play anywhere if I’m called upon,” he said. “I haven’t played for this long at a high level and be happy to not play. Every player wants to play. But the manager has to make a decision that’s right for the team and I keep going back to it, the team is more important than any individual.
“If I play and if I’m called upon, I’ll be more than ready than anybody else.”
Still, looking around the squad, the skipper can see shades of Estonia in 2011 when Trapattoni’s men booked their place at the last Euros via the same play-off system. Keane reckons there’s a calmness about his team mates and that there’s a buzz in the air that the national side is ready.
“This is why we play the game,” he said with a sparkle in his eye. “This is why you play international football. This is why you play football as a kid growing up: having them memories of the big competitions, of a World Cup; USA, watching Ray Houghton score that goal; 2002, I played in. Having them memories…
“We’re on the brink now of qualifying for a major, major tournament. It’s exciting.
“The key is for us to get an away goal. We’re quite capable of going there and getting a result but it’s not going to be easy. If we can get a clean sheet and maybe nick a goal… if we get anybody back in Ireland, we fancy ourselves against anybody.”
An away goal? A goal? How about a goal from a man who has scored in play-offs for fun? Surely it’s worth reminding the manager? Surely it’s worth knocking on Martin O’Neill’s door and giving him a heads up that Ireland’s most prolofic goalscorer of all time is still around and still raring to go…
“I don’t think I need to do that. I think 67 goals probably says that.”
