Watching Lion King with Seedorf - Robbie Keane’s whirlwind spell in Italy

On August 1, 2000, almost exactly 25 years before Evan Ferguson was greeted by less than a hundred curious Roma fans at La Fiumicino airport, Robbie Keane was presented to the media at La Pinetina, Inter Milan’s palatial training headquarters near the Swiss border. With Keane just beginning his Italian lessons, the locals largely ceded the floor to the clutch of tabloid journalists parachuted in from the UK who crowded Keane like an army of cricket fielders thronging around a batsman, goading him into giving up his wicket.

The questions came at pace, then varied up with spin, bouncing every which way. Now that Inter had bought him for £13million, bringing the total spent on Keane in a year to £19million, did he have a message for Sir Alex Ferguson, who said he wouldn’t spend a half-million on him?

“That’s all behind me now,” Keane said. “I’m just looking to the future. Sir Alex Ferguson is one of the greatest football managers in the world… after Mr Lippi [Marcello, the Inter head coach] of course.”

Keane moved to Inter after an impressive debut season in the Premier League with Coventry, who bought him for £6m ALAMY

There was talk of Keane getting a wage bump to £40,000 a week. Had he bought himself a present?

“Have you read the contract, have you? What I earn is confidential. As for presents, my present to myself will be goals. Lots of goals for Inter.”

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How did he feel about going head-to-head with Christian Vieri for a place in the side? Why not play alongside Vieri, he replied.

He had come to Milan without a girlfriend or family or any entourage. Was he engaged?

“I’m engaged to Inter FC,” he said. When they were done, the journalists were left wondering if it was time yet to introduce the new ball.

Seedorf roomed with Keane and enjoyed watching Disney films FRED ERNS/REUTERS

The contrast between Keane being thrust into that unfiltered glare and Ferguson shielded by the buffer of Roma’s TV channel and social media pages reflects by itself the difference between then and now. While Serie A has evolved over the past decade into a high-end recuperation unit for players who have lost their way in Spain and England, it was still the summit of European club football in Keane’s time.

Inter’s striking roster alone included Vieri, Ronaldo, Iván Zamorano, Hakan Sukur and Alvaro Recoba. At 20-years-old, Keane’s presence among the brightest young stars in Europe wasn’t in dispute; the question was always how he could possibly navigate a path through such a traffic snarl of attacking talent.

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“Looking back, I was definitely too young going there at that stage,” Keane said on the We Are Liverpool podcast in 2023, “but sometimes things are out of your hands. But some of the players we had… Ronaldo was injured the whole time because he was having bad problems with his knee. Christian Vieri, Hakan Sukur, Alvaro Recoba, Iván Zamorano — it was top, top players.”

For everything special about Keane, the glamour of it all felt surreal then. Still does. Vieri had enough English to show Keane around town while he waited to move into his apartment in the same block as Ronaldo.

Vieri helped Keane, who knew little Italian, to acclimatise to his new surroundings in Milan LUCA BRUNO/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Clarence Seedorf was his room-mate at the training centre before games and on away trips, indulging his preference for watching animated movies until all hours and cat-napping through the day before matches while Keane was kept awake half the night. Before his second game for Inter, against Helsingborg in the second leg of a Champions League qualifier, he had already been christened “Baby Irish”. One vendor outside the San Siro had run out of Keane replica jerseys 90 minutes before the game began.

From the hero worship at Wolverhampton Wanderers, where Keane made all things feel possible, and Coventry City, where — having signed for £6million — he earned his move to Italy after just one season in the Premier League, he was also stepping into a horrendously volatile atmosphere. After Inter drew 0-0 against Helsingborg and lost 1-0 on aggregate, the supporters waited two hours to savage Lippi and anyone else they could get near. At an Italian Cup tie that November, with Inter already 6-1 down to Parma after the first leg, a Molotov cocktail was hurled at the team bus.

Lippi had already been replaced as manager by Marco Tardelli by then, Keane still hadn’t scored a league goal and had been peripheral to Inter’s Uefa Cup campaign. When he did get a start alongside Zamorano he was forced to withdraw on the morning of the game with a back injury.

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By December Chelsea, Newcastle United, Charlton Athletic and Leeds United had all been in touch. When West Ham United bid £10million for him, they were told to dig deeper. Keane’s own list of preferred clubs narrowed down to Leeds, Liverpool and Sunderland, another snapshot of a different time. In the end he generated another £13million in transfer fees when Leeds made an initial loan move permanent the following summer, and was back in England before Christmas with stories of Seedorf and the The Lion King, pasta courses followed by fish, and little glasses of wine with lunch. “If we had a glass of wine here, then you’re cracking on,” he said.

“I definitely don’t regret it. I know I was only there a short time but I learnt so much about the culture and different ways of living your life.”

Ferguson scored six goals in four pre-season matches with Roma but has been able to operate under less scrutiny than Keane endured 25 years ago FABIO ROSSI/GETTY

In keeping with their shared story as precocious teenage talents Ferguson’s first few weeks in Italy have already followed a similar path — the breathless reporting of six goals hammered in during four pre-season games, followed by an appealingly abrasive display against Bologna last weekend.

He marked the death of his grandfather yesterday with another good performance against Pisa last night in a 1-0 win that included some neat work to set up Mathías Soulé for his first goal before being replaced late in the second half. With Troy Parrott’s good form for AZ Alkmaar now stalled by injury, Ferguson is certain to start for Ireland against Hungary next weekend. Another significant step.

“He just needs to play,” Keane said about Ferguson in a recent interview. “I always tell the young strikers to just go and play as much as they can. The more you play, the more experience and confidence you get. Playing and scoring goals could only help him when it comes to the Irish national team.”

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In his first game back with Ireland in 2000 after moving to Milan, Keane scored in a 2-2 draw away to the Netherlands. Ferguson returns from Italy this week to play against Hungary with fans investing more in the hope that his resurgence can continue than burdening him with the same expectation Keane carried every time he played. For everything that joins Keane and Ferguson through history, these remain different times in the ways that matter most.

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