Keanes united by acclaim and achievement

After much palaver the television crew were ready. As Robbie Keane and the presenter walked through the trees into shot she posed the first question. It went along the lines of: "Robbie, do you remember much about your teenage years?" A slightly perplexed Keane replied: "I should do, I'm only 21 now."

It was an understandable mistake. Keane has won 26 international caps, played for four teams in two countries, and prompted transfer fees totalling more than £30m. As he said when we spoke later: "Sometimes you can't believe it. A lot has happened in five years."

And much more might occur in the next five, for club and country. His club, Leeds, visit Old Trafford today as Premiership leaders despite their collective youth. His country, the Republic of Ireland, are a play-off away from appearing in the World Cup. Keane also has a public profile across the Irish Sea which one experienced judge described as akin to "David Beckham and Michael Owen combined".

It is a heady situation for a young, single man but Keane appears admirably level-headed. There is no hint of prima donna behaviour as he waits in the north Yorkshire chill while the TV crew endlessly shoot and re-shoot. Though wealthy beyond the dreams of most boys from Dublin's Tallaght estate, the diamond stud in his ear is no more indicative of a desire to rest on his laurels than is Beckham's jewellery. Instead, like Beckham and Owen, he gives every impression of being dedicated to his profession. It is no coincidence that all three are in the same management stable.

As a talker Keane is more reminiscent of Beckham at 20 than Owen but, perhaps because he is less polished than the Liverpool striker, his love of football comes through more clearly. Like Beckham he seems happy just to be playing. The fortune is a bonus, the fame an inevitable by-product.

In between interviews he has been demonstrating a series of juggling tricks for the cameras. That, he said afterwards, is the bit he enjoyed. More, even, it seems, than being interviewed by a leggy blonde who clearly adored him.

"I'd rather have the attention than not," said Keane, aware that for top-level footballers fame comes with success. "It was worse in Italy [where he spent six months with Internazionale]. Over here people just say 'can I have an autograph' or 'hello'. There people run up to you and it's 'oh, Robbie, Robbie'. I couldn't speak Italian so I'd just go 'Ciao'.

"My friends and family treat me the same but obviously other people see me as Robbie Keane the footballer. As a kid I'd pretend to be John Barnes. I was a Liverpool fan and loved his silky skills, and while it's nice to think people do the same about me sometimes you can't believe it. People say 'Ohh, Robbie Keane' and sometimes I just have to laugh. It's a bit strange."

We are talking in the former gun lodge for Harewood House, now a country hotel near Wetherby. The Leeds training ground and Keane's house are both nearby. In Milan he could see the San Siro from his apartment window and had Ronaldo as a neighbour. In Yorkshire the view is "another house and fields – I'm a country boy now".

He is also among friends, which is one reason why, after Inter called time on what he regards as a character-forming and worthwhile experience, he preferred Elland Road to Anfield or Stamford Bridge. Several Irish team-mates are in the Leeds squad and the manager, David O'Leary, is a fellow south Dubliner and a childhood hero – "for the penalty [against Romania in the 1990 World Cup]," notes Keane, "not skill-wise. He was a big centre half who used to kick people."

This harsh assessment on a cultured defender is tempered by the addition: "It was a brave penalty and people have never forgotten. Everyone in Ireland pretended to be taking that penalty and I was no different. He was a national hero."

Ireland's achievements in reaching and prospering in Italia 90 fired the imagination of Keane's generation. It was the Republic's first finals in the competition's history and it opened a new range of possibilities. Now, after missing out in 1998, Ireland are on the brink of qualifying again. Only a play-off, against Iran or the United Arab Emirates next month, bars their way.

"It would be a shame if we don't qualify now, after getting 24 points in a tough group," said Keane. "The play-off will be hard but we've a tremendous team spirit." Mick McCarthy, the Irish manager, has endured much criticism in Ireland but Keane added: "Mick had to start from scratch. A lot of the old players, the legends, left. He had to bring in new faces and I think he is appreciated now."

Keane, too, has had to face criticism, having gone more than a year since his last international goal. One observer felt he was more relaxed in front of goal with Leeds, for whom he has struck 15 goals in 30 games, but Keane said: "At Leeds I play every week. There are more games and more chances. With Ireland I might not play for a few months. But I'm not bothered about pressure. I just love playing. I don't let things get to me.

"People expected me to score goals every game because at the start I was scoring a few. They now realise I'm only young. I'll miss chances. But I'm not someone who'll think 'I missed that' and hide in a nutshell. I just get on with it."

It is an uncomplicated approach, but one typical of Keane. The club magazine has a habit of asking players what is the first thing they do on a day off. Keane replied: "Wake up."

The wake-up call will be an early one this morning as the match against Manchester United is a noon kick-off. Keane has yet to win against them but will not lack incentive given Sir Alex Ferguson's celebrated claim that he was not worth a tenth of the £6m Coventry paid Wolves for him two years ago.

Ferguson, incidentally, vehemently denies this, insisting he simply said for that money he would want a player guaranteed to play in his first team. But he does admit he should have signed Keane when, at 16, he was recommended by his son, Darren.

Not that Sir Alex is in bad company. Two years earlier Leeds had rejected Keane, despite his scoring in a trial. They, however, took their second chance. The indications suggest they will not regret it.

In Manchester United's season of flux, as even the diamond talents of Juan Sebastian Veron and Ruud van Nistelrooy cannot conceal the decline of some old certainties and the rise of new doubts, one thing doesn't change. It is Sir Alex Ferguson's dependence on the will and the rage of Roy Keane.

It is a rage which when controlled, when channelled away from old vendettas and passing provocation, remains Ferguson's most vital asset as he strives to pull off the most thunderous exit in the history of big-time English football with still another successful defence of the Premiership title and a second Champions' League triumph. This morning he sweats out Keane's fitness for the potentially huge game with league leaders Leeds United and makes little attempt to conceal the importance of a successful test on the Irishman's injury.

It would, when you think about it, be gratuitous to do so. If ever there was one, this is a six-pointer loaded with psychological baggage. Indeed, if losing to Bolton Wanderers last week was an unacceptable shock to Ferguson's system, defeat by Leeds might provoke a call to bury his heart at Keane's wounded knee.

Whatever happens in the medical room, the chances are that it will not come to that. While United's form has been uneven, to say the least, the injection of Veron and Van Nistelrooy has already suggested dimensions of sophistication and cutting edge which may yet carry the team to heights so far untouched and which, if marshalled with sufficient application today, could easily put the pretensions of Leeds under a withering inspection. But for it to happen, for the doubts about the new, freely rotated United to be properly expelled, there is no question about the value of Keane to his team at this pivotal point in their season. We are not talking about any easy measurement of football skill here. We are discussing the intangible element of desire, and how Keane, more than any other contemporary, can both express and bestow that quality which ultimately could prove most decisive today.

The fact is that in two key areas of preparation Ferguson's young rival David O'Leary has a clear advantage. Unblessed, or perhaps unburdened, by Ferguson's range of talent, the Leeds manager has been able to develop a rhythm built on the certainties of consistent selection without the extra physical demands made by the Champions' League.

O'Leary also has hunger on tap. Players like Harry Kewell, Mark Viduka, Lee Bowyer and Rio Ferdinand have announced their skills at the highest level, but they have yet to taste the sensation of proving themselves the best. For players like Beckham, Scholes, Gary Neville, Giggs and Butt the Premiership title is a commonplace, an expectation as much as a goal. So how does Ferguson re-invigorate the pot? He signs great players, he creates a competitive buzz, and hopes that from it a few of the old sparks of ambition fly. But much more than anything he looks to the motivator Keane.

It is Keane who re-generates a desire to win as a wolf grows a winter coat. It is simply the way he is, and a way that has never been more valuable in this age of football wealth, when a lifetime of financial security can come in one year's salary. It is Keane who has driven Ireland to the verge of Word Cup qualification, splitting the European football powers Portugal and Holland, and returned to Old Trafford without causing in his manager a whiff of doubt that his name should be the first on the team-sheet. It is Keane who has railed against the passive, corporate smugness of United fans on football days when he could smell only the cordite of battle. It is Keane who sets himself up, with scarcely a whimper of protest from Ferguson, as the moral arbiter of United's performance.

And now, you have to suspect, it is Keane who stands between United and any panicky sense that Ferguson's Last Hurrah could turn into something of a lament.

Of course there are matters of concern against which even the zeal of Keane is powerless. The Irishman couldn't do much about the climactic arrogance of Fabien Barthez against Deportivo La Coruña last week, when the gifted Frenchman confirmed his status as an accident waiting to happen. But having had the scrape, Barthez will now presumably concentrate his mind on the vital need for a more orthodox approach to his job. Can Laurent Blanc prove that he still has the physical resources to operate at the top of the game, that Ferguson did more than invest in a magnificent monument of a once great career? Has something died, however subliminally, within the splendid Paul Scholes since the landing of The Witch, the sublimely creative Veron? Can Wes Brown settle down to the challenge of consistently inflicting his power and talent on opposing strikers? These are questions likely to leap out of the early Old Trafford action, and the one certainty is that the chances of re-assuring answers will be hugely enhanced if Roy Keane is pronounced fit.

Keane is not a talisman. He is far more elemental than that. He is the man who so unforgettably kept United on the road to their European Cup win two years ago with his absolute refusal to surrender to Juventus in Italy. He is part tidal force, part conscience, and unquestionably the United player best equipped to force his team-mates back to the well at least one more time.

No doubt O'Leary will be stressing a whole range of positives in the Leeds dressing-room. He will point to the shockingly porous nature of United's defence for much of this season. He will invite the mouths of Viduka and Robbie Keane and Kewell to water at an array of opportunity. He will say it is Leeds United's time, a chance to finally strike down the aura of Manchester United in their own fortress. He will remind his team of recent performances which foretold of their chance to hurt the giant where he lives.

All of which will sound authentic and compelling and no doubt it will be received with some whoops of resolve. Then, in the way of the pre-match ritual, Leeds will be shown the team-sheet of Manchester United. There are no prizes here for guessing whose name they will look for with most interest. It will be that of the war chief of wounded knee.