Guinness World Records not keen on Robbie Keane’s goalscoring exploits
In February, the Irish Examiner revealed how football supporter Joe McCarthy contacted Guinness World Records to suggest that Robbie Keane has achieved a feat unparalleled in the history of football. Joe runs the ‘Irish Abroad’ website, a statistics site which collects data on Irish players.
He realised that by finding the back of the net against Oman in his final game for the Republic of Ireland last year, Robbie Keane had scored a goal at international level for 19 consecutive years.
Joe subsequently went about investigating whether this was a world record. Having done the research and eliminated noted goalscorers such as Pele, Ali Daei, and Gerd Muller, the closest Joe could find to Keane’s achievement was Hungarian great Ferenc Puskas who scored in 12 consecutive years.
Earlier this year he sent his research off to Guinness World Records in the hope that Ireland’s all-time greatest goalscorer could add another honour to his glittering career.
However Guinness World Records has contacted Joe to tell him that they cannot accept his proposal to have the former LA Galaxy, Liverpool and Leeds’ man’s achievement noted as a world record.
“Our team of expert Records Managers receive thousands of new record proposals every year from all over the world which are carefully assessed to establish if they meet our stringent criteria,” Guinness World Records said.
“Every record verified by Guinness World Records must be measurable by a single superlative, verifiable, standardisable, breakable and also present an element of skill,” it said.
Despite not deeming Keane’s achievement worthy of note, the record-makers told Joe to consider looking at “most consecutive Premier League football seasons scored in” or “most consecutive FIFA World Cup matches scored in” as alternative feats to investigate.
While he said he is disappointed in Guinness World Record’s decision, Joe remains hopeful that it is the wording of his record suggestion that was the problem.
