Will Keane: A Career of Resilience and Second Chances
On a May evening in 2012, in an age-group game most people have long forgotten, two young centre-forwards led the line for England Under-19s against Switzerland.
If you were picking which one would be plotting a World Cup semi-final a decade later, you would not have chosen Harry Kane.
You would have chosen the other lad. The one from Manchester United. Will Keane.
Back then, the path in front of Keane looked straight and clear.
"I'd never had any setbacks at that point," he tells BBC Sport. "When you're young, you're fearless. The whole trajectory of my career was up. I made my senior debut for Manchester United. We won the Youth Cup. I was doing well for England. Everything was taking off."
It was. Until it wasn’t.
A career split in one tackle
Near the end of that qualifier against Switzerland, Keane’s knee went. A major injury, the kind that changes lives. Sixteen months out.
While he learned how to walk and run again, Kane was learning the hard yards of the English pyramid – loan spells at Norwich and Leicester, then a breakthrough at Tottenham.
"It's timing," Keane says, without bitterness but with the weight of experience. "Some lads go their whole career and have a few niggles, but nothing derails them too much.
"That first injury was at a crucial time. I had my foot in the door. The feeling was I would probably have been around the first team.
"If the injury had happened a couple of years later, I might have been an established squad player. When I had it, I missed 16 months at a crucial part of the transition from reserves to seniors."
The sliding doors swung shut. One striker went through, the other was left staring at the frame.
Now, as Kane steels himself for Argentina and another tilt at history, Keane is in Leicestershire, working at Champneys Springs, one of 45 out-of-contract players trying to keep careers alive at the PFA’s 12-week pre-season camp.
He is 33, on his eighth club, 335 senior games and 85 goals behind him, and still not finished.
"I've got a few years left," he says, and he means it.
A different kind of pre-season
The PFA camp is part boot camp, part lifeline.
"A couple of lads I know did the camp last season and spoke really highly," Keane says. "I almost feel like I'm part of a squad, and we're away for pre-season. There are so many staff; medical, coaching, administrative, media.
"It's quite competitive and there are seven or eight games, so clubs can see you're playing. There's an app clubs can sign up to. It's like a PFA transfer list – all our training data goes on it. Clubs can contact us directly, so hopefully if you go somewhere, you can go straight in."
For a player who has already ridden out one spell on the scrapheap – Ipswich let him go in 2020, choosing not to trigger a one-year option during the financial shock of Covid – there is a calmness about him now.
Back then, he eventually returned to Wigan, a club that would reshape not just his career, but his mind.
Rashford’s rise, Keane’s reality
The physical setbacks alone would break plenty.
The first ACL was brutal. The second felt cruel.
In between came another twist, one that would echo through Manchester United’s modern history.
In February 2016, Keane started an FA Cup tie at Shrewsbury. He "ripped his groin" that night. Three days later, with Anthony Martial injured in the warm-up before a Europa League tie against Midtjylland, Louis van Gaal turned to a teenager instead.
Marcus Rashford.
Rashford scored twice on his debut, then two more against Arsenal in the Premier League days later. A star was born. A door was closed.
"I went to America for an operation, landed in Philadelphia, turned my phone on and saw he scored two more," Keane recalls.
At 23, he knew. That was it for him at United, the club he and his family adored, the place where it had once felt inevitable he would become a first-team regular.
He did what professionals do: moved on. A fresh start at Hull City, newly promoted to the Premier League. New hope.
In his sixth game, his knee went again. Another ACL. Fourteen months out. Hull were relegated. Team-mates moved up and out – Harry Maguire to Leicester, Andy Robertson to Liverpool, Sam Clucas to Swansea.
Keane, again, was left behind.
"It was crushing," he says. "I missed the whole season, and we got relegated. A lot of the young lads still got good moves."
Rebuilding the mind
At Wigan, he stopped pretending he could simply “tough it out” mentally.
"I'd used sports psychologists before and always tried to be positive and optimistic, but I started working with someone at Wigan who hadn't worked in football before," Keane explains.
"He's a bit more of a spiritual psychologist. We focus on positive intentions, manifesting, visualisation.
"I'd tried everything in the box, and kept breaking down, so I wanted to do something a bit different."
This wasn’t about clichés on mindset. It was about survival.
"I wish I'd had that when I was younger, especially with the setbacks I had early on. It might have got me back into the right frame of mind.
"For any player if you've not got belief in yourself, and you're lacking confidence, you're not going to perform the way you can."
He admits the doubts crept in during those Championship loans after his first United injury.
"I was around the first team at United, then I got the injury, had a few loans in the Championship where I didn't do very well and I started to doubt myself. Wigan catapulted me.
"Before that I should have backed myself. I played with a lot of those lads all the way through, and that's where I was potentially heading.
"If I'd focused on the mental part earlier, it might have been a different outcome.
"Even at times when I picked up injuries, maybe I had a bit of self-doubt which led to something going wrong. If I was in the right frame of mind, maybe one of those bad injuries wouldn't even have happened."
It is a striking admission: not just that belief shapes performance, but that he wonders if it shaped his body’s fragility too.
Kane’s certainty, Keane’s perspective
While Keane wrestled with his confidence, his old strike partner was forging a reputation as one of the most ruthless finishers in world football.
"His old strike partner Kane, it seems, has no self-doubt," Keane says, almost with admiration rather than envy.
"I remember when we were young, people said he wasn't mobile but technically, the time he put into his finishing and his obsessiveness to be the best in terms of shooting, you see it don't you?
"He's so sure of himself, because he's put the work in. He knows he's a complete striker.
"He's obviously got that belief in himself. He might miss one, but he's not going shy away from it. If he didn't have certainty in his mind, he wouldn't be as prolific.
"He's not arrogant, he's just got the confidence that sets top players apart."
One career has become the benchmark. The other, a study in resilience.
Between two flags, and waiting for the call
Keane’s journey has taken him from United to Hull, Wigan, Ipswich, Preston and, most recently, a loan at Reading before his contract at Deepdale expired this summer.
He is back in that familiar limbo, training hard, waiting for the right phone call.
"There's been a few chats," he says. "I'm sure they're aware of me. They might be looking for A, B and C targets, but when the season does start, if a club doesn't have a great start, there's a bit of panic and maybe things open up."
Internationally, his story is split as well. Youth caps for England up to Under-21 level, senior honours for the Republic of Ireland, where he has five caps and unfinished business.
"I am proud to represent Ireland. My dad was born there and moved to England. But I've also been born and raised in England, and my family's English.
"I've got a foot in both camps."
So while one former team-mate carries the hopes of a nation into the sharp end of a World Cup, Keane will be on a training pitch in Leicestershire, chasing fitness, sharpness and one more chance.
Different stadiums. Different stakes. The same game. And for Will Keane, still, the same unshaken belief that his story has another chapter to write.
