In defence of Robbie Keane

A BIT like the man himself, I was guilty of a bad miss the other night, only catching up with RTÉ’s Champions League coverage from Madrid when the Atletico-Liverpool match was all over and the panel were already in gloves and masks performing what looked like a pretty grisly post-mortem on Robbie Keane.

At that point, I had no idea of what Robbie’s crime was but it was clear enough that it was something pretty horrendous.

As ever, the Dunph had his nose highest in the air to escape the pong. What Ireland’s skipper had done was “stupid and unprofessional”. It was “a capital offence, a mortal sin.”

His manager should have made a show of him and taken him straight off. He’d disrespected his sport, like a golfer putting with one hand. He’d messed with the gods, Bill. If someone had done that in one of the teams Eamon had played in down the years, back in the dressing room he might well have got a smack for his trouble.

The by now well established panto roles of the panel demand that, at this point, Bill has to wonder aloud if Eamon mightn’t be going just a little too far, even though he knows it’s highly unlikely that Eamon will respond to this traditional prompt by saying: “Do you know Bill, you might have a point there. I can see now that I went completely overboard and I’m really glad you pulled me up on that. I think I’ll just go and have a little lie-down.”

So nothing doing there and instead Bill turned, as we all do in our hour of need, to the man with all the answers, John Giles.

And John didn’t let us down either, proving once more that, unlike the Dunph, a pundit can afford to speak softly if he carries a big stick (the implement in question being nothing less than our John’s God-like genius, of course).

So, would John be as “hardline” as Eamon in his attitude to Robbie’s wrong-doing, Bill wanted to know?

“I would certainly be very tempted to,” said John, careful to maintain a bit of emotional distance from the man at the other end of the table. But then, ah what the hell, he gave into the temptation anyway.

“It was a very serious offence from a professional footballer of Robbie’s experience,” he solemnly intoned.

We didn’t even need to hear Ronnie Whelan’s verdict – also negative as it happens — to know that Robbie Keane was doomed.

In the background, I could have sworn I heard the sound of an RTÉ props chippie at work with wood, nails and rope...

So of what grievous crime against, not just humanity, but the sporting gods Bill, had the Liverpool striker been found guilty? Deliberately breaking an opponent’s leg? Head-butting a mascot? Assassinating the ref from behind a grassy knoll? No, worse, much worse, he’d missed an open goal.

Actually, it was rather more exasperating even than that — in attempting a fancy flick, he’d spurned the opportunity to stick the ball in the back of the net, put his side two-up and thereby reduce the chance, subsequently gleefully taken, of Atletico grabbing a share of the points.

So, yes, Robbie Keane messed up and messed up badly. But do we really need the Montrose wing of the Spanish Inquisition to show him and us the error of his ways? Just as you have to wonder if it was really necessary for the venerable sports columnist James Lawton to invoke the name of a true deity — Pele — as a kind of yardstick with which to further beat Robbie for his bit of foolishness. Jim noted that the foundation stone of Pele’s reputation was a “simplicity of intent born in humility”. And he approvingly quoted Bobby Charlton who once observed: “If he (Pele) was faced with a simple task, he could complete it without show.”

Really? The first thing to say is that, in the entire history of the game, there probably isn’t a footballer who wouldn’t suffer by comparison with Pele, so it’s just a bit too obvious and easy to make the great man the foreman of the jury in the case against R. Keane.

Secondly — Pele never did things for show? Exhibit A — one of my favourite moments in all of football, his outrageous dummy against Uruguay in the 1970 World Cup finals. If you’ve never seen it, rectify that omission immediately — and then tell me that if the Brazilian had taken the pass in his stride and gone around the ‘keeper in a more orthodox manner, he wouldn’t have made the finish a lot easier for himself.

Instead, he did something else: he ran across the ball, around the back of the baffled ‘keeper and then, from an acute angle, turned and squeezed his shot just the wrong side of the far post. Had it gone in, it would have been the greatest goal in the world, ever — no question. Instead, he fashioned the greatest, most imaginative, most mind-boggling miss — but a miss nonetheless.

So, forget messing with the gods and ponder that even the gods mess up from time to time.

To paraphrase Brian’s mum, Robbie Keane is no messiah, he’s just a very silly boy for showboating when he should have scored. But one moment of bad judgement shouldn’t detract from his fully merited status as one of Irish sport’s national treasures, an honest, hard-working and hugely talented footballer whose cockiness, I would suggest, is an essential part of his professional personality.

James Lawton says Robbie needs to put “the schoolyard behind him”. But I think that’s just about the worst thing he could do and the last thing the world’s most entertaining game needs.

There is, of course, a time and a place for everything, especially when the goal is gaping and the ball is at your feet, but Robbie Keane doesn’t need to abandon the schoolyard to learn that lesson.