As keen as ever for action

SO then, Robbie, were you rooting for your old club on Saturday night?

The captain of Ireland looks momentarily baffled.

“Who?” he asks.

“Inter.”

“Oh, I thought you were on about Crumlin,” he grins, as the room explodes into laughter.

As he prepares to pick up his 98th cap against Paraguay at the RDS this evening, Robbie Keane has been a fixture among us for so long now that his time at Inter Milan seems almost as far distant as his rookie days with Crumlin United.

But the well-travelled Dubliner will admit to no such confusion about his current home in football, even if we in the media want him to confirm that his immediate future is, at the very least, uncertain.

“It’s Tottenham,” he says sharply. “I’ve got a three-year contract, I’ve to report back on 5 July unless Harry Redknapp or the chairman pulls me aside. Unless people tell me different, I’m a Tottenham player.”

Which, of course, is technically true, even if Keane, on loan to Celtic, was obliged to watch from a distance as his club mates marched into Europe this season.

“I’m not one of those bitter people,” he says. “I was talking to the lads on a regular basis and I was delighted for them. “I like to see my friends doing well. I’ve got a big association with Tottenham and always will. It was a massive achievement for them.

“It’s been the same top four for ages, someone had to break the mould, and I’m delighted it was Tottenham.”

There might have been no such reward for the team in Hoops but, for Keane, 16 goals in 19 games vindicated his loan move north.

“That’s why I went, I want to play games,” he says. “I’m not one of these players happy to take my money and sit on the bench. I never understood that. I fully respect Liam Lawrence for wanting to move on (from Stoke).

“As a kid, you don’t dream of playing bits and bobs of games. As a player, playing games is where you get your sharpness and fitness.”

Also where you get your hunger back if, as Keane is honest enough to admit, you lose your appetite.

“I was in a bit of rut at Liverpool and then going back to Tottenham,” he says. “I did well at first but I didn’t have that hunger and maybe I needed to go away to get that back. It had nothing to do with the disappointment of Paris. Maybe it was a lack of confidence, going from Liverpool back to Tottenham. I’d lost confidence as a player and maybe going to Celtic was the best thing that happened to me.”

Keane says he hopes that Neil Lennon will retain the manager’s job at Celtic.

“I hope he gets the job,” he says. “I was impressed with him, he is very passionate, and I’m sure if anyone can turn the club around to where they were a few years ago, he can.

“People talk about lack of experience but look at Guardiola (at Barcelona). It’s the same situation as Neil and look at what he achieved. Neil will only get experience if he gets the job and gets games under his belt. Ask the supporters and any of the lads and they all want him to get the job.”

Returning his focus to the international team, Keane reckons it’s time Irish football forgot Paris and began looking to the future.

“The disappointment of not going to the World Cup, we’ve been getting questions about it for a long time,” he says, “but we can’t dwell on it, we’ve got to move on.”

So, of course, we oblige by asking him another question about Paris: has he spoken to any of the French players since that infamous night in November? “A few of them, yeah,” he replies with a thin smile. “I’m sure at the time they were saying ‘you should have gone through’, I’m sure when they turned their backs, they were probably laughing. They said we were the much better team, but what can you do? We can’t keep moaning and crying about it.”

Keane, 30 in July, doesn’t need to think back to Crumlin United or Inter to realise that he has more years behind him than ahead of him as a top-flight footballer (when Trapattoni, seated beside his captain, begs to differ and suggests the Dubliner can go on for another 10 years, Keane pulls a comical face).

But could he see himself still in the international frame by the time of the 2014 World Cup?

“We’ll concentrate on this campaign first,” he smiles. “I have to be realistic, I’m not getting any younger, so it depends how I feel, how my body is. It depends on injuries and how the legs are. But if everything is okay, of course.

“I enjoy playing for my country. I have the enthusiasm I had when I was 16 and made my debut for the underage team. I feel great. I still feel as young as ever and, as long as that continues, I’ll continue.”

And when it comes time to hang up his shooting boots?

“I think I’d like to go into management,” he says. “I’ll probably take my coaching badges but for now I’ll concentrate on playing. I don’t know anything else but football.”