::: FistedAway welcomes a guest post from Mark Patterson :::
Ireland striker Robbie Keane intends to fulfil the last major ambition of his career by making a January switch to a club for which he feels absolutely nothing.
Keane, 31, has played for nine different clubs since he left Crumlin United as a bright-eyed youngster for the bright lights and orange shirts of Wolves, but told Fisted Away that he had set his heart on a new challenge.
“I’d love to just turn out for a club where I basically didn’t care either way,” Keane said.
“I would be happy even just sitting on the bench for a bit; it would be less pressure than knowing that if I don’t score the winner, my 10-year-old self will cry himself to sleep at night.”
Keane rubbished the notion that he only said he supported his new teams to win favour from fans.
“I know I’ve had a lot of stick for signing for several of my boyhood clubs,” Keane said, “but I’ve just been very fortunate that the moves have come up at the right times – especially in recent times every January and most summers.”
“Every young lad has their one dream club. I just dreamt a little bigger.”
Keane’s father, Robert senior, claimed that the youngster’s support for all clubs started off as harmless, before quickly spiralling into something more worrying.
“He was simultaneously elated by his favourite team’s every victory, and devastated for his beloved losers at the same time. He never learned to feel the apathy that a goalless draw between Chesterfield and Torquay should inspire.
“His first football coach used to call him Schrödinger because with every act on the pitch it seemed he was, inside, simultaneously alive and dead.”
Robert Keane also revealed that the family began to experience financial difficulties as a result of buying all the replica shirts that the young Robbie required. “It became hard for us to put food on the table, given that it was covered in shirts”.
A list of clubs is being researched and drawn up as possible January destinations for Keane. An early proposal of creating a new club to facilitate Keane’s dream was dismissed as unworkable when Keane said he had “dreamed as a boy of playing for his own club.”
Keane’s spokespeople remain tight-lipped, but the shortlist is said to include Colo-Colo (Robbie’s dislike at things with the same name began when he first arrived for Ireland duty only to find another R Keane on the books), Swaziland outfit Eleven Men in Flight, any team in the Belgian Third Division and Aston Villa.
Sidesplitting funny!