He has scored some pretty good goals himself down the years but Robbie Keane’s chief claim to fame on the Irish front is in the quantity department. Last night he happily ceded the quality crown to team-mate Aiden McGeady.
“Of course everyone is delighted to score in the last minute,” he said, “but to score a goal like that? It deserves to win any game. If anyone else, one of the top players in the world, scored that we’d be talking about it for a long time. The turn, the touch, the finish. Only he could have scored that, there’s nobody else who could have.”
It was, sure enough, a good goal but then it is, to be fair, the sort of thing that people probably expected to see just a little more from the former Celtic player when he declared for Ireland all those years ago. Keane, though, believes that the midfielder’s day may have come with everything set up nicely for the 28-year-old to finally fulfil his huge potential over the course of the coming 14 months or so.
“I think this could be a big campaign for Aiden,” he suggests. “He’s experienced enough now to go on and help this team and be a big part of this squad. He’s at an age now, back in the Premier League with a good team and him delivering on a regular basis for Everton will only benefit us. And when you’ve got a manager you feel comfortable with and who knows your personality, it helps you from the start.”
Keane, of course, is well used to shouldering the lion’s share of the goalscoring burden within the team and a lot of points have been dropped down the years because others haven’t carried their weight on that front. But the LA Galaxy star believes that, having nearly doubled his international tally last night alone, McGeady can now make a much more sustained contribution.
“When you’ve got good players like him, people who can contribute and score goals, it’s only going to help the team. And he can do that. From day one I’ve been a big fan of Aiden. I’ve made it clear over the years that he can deliver that kind of stuff.”
There will be some big nights over the coming months when Ireland may well need the winger to chip in again on the goal front but Keane believes that last night’s late winner and the extra points it delivered may turn to be critically important in setting the team on its way to France just as the narrow victory over Armenia four years ago started the qualification ball rolling.
“These are the games that you have to get something out of,” he says, “and this could be the turning point. At the end of the campaign, these could be the points that we look back at say: ‘that last minute goal got us through’. How many times have you seen that? We deserved to win, no question in my eyes but as long as you get the result, that’s all that matters.”
