The captain of the Irish national football team Robbie Keane can miss the European Championship finals in France through injury. He is Ireland’s top goal-scorer and his absence would affect his team’s performance a lot.
35-year-old striker received a calf injury during a training session on Saturday and won’t be available for the friendly match against Belarus in Cork.
“He felt pain in the calf on Saturday morning, so we’re just taking it on a daily basis. He won’t play in the friendly game against Belarus,” the manager Martin O’Neill said.
“He had it scanned and it’s hopefully not too serious, but enough to put him in jeopardy for a while, so we’ll see how it is. He had an injection this morning and we’ll see how it is when it settles down. Robbie is a pretty quick healer – he says that himself. He is the captain of the team, we would want him to be there and there’s not much more I can tell you,” O’Neill added.
The manager of Rep. of Ireland has more problems, because Harry Arter and James McCarthy are also doubtful.
Robbie Keane has scored 67 goals in 143 appearances for the national team since his debut in 1998. He is the player with the biggest number of goals in the European qualifiers – 23. The forward has scored 3 goals in 4 matches at World Cup tournaments. Only 20 of his goals for Ireland are in non-competitive games. In his club career, Keane has scored more than 300 goals. He is a real goal-scoring machine and the doctors will do everything to get him back on the pitch for Ireland.
Ireland are to start their participation at the Euro 2016 on 13th June against Sweden. They will also have to play against Italy and Belgium.
Keane, for sure, will be in the squad of Ireland. But, he will be more useful on the pitch. Without him, Ireland don’t seem to have a big chance for reaching the Round of 16.
However, Ireland had a great qualifying campaign, losing only 2 of 12 matches, including the playoffs. The Irish team even recorded a victory (1-0) against Germany, which directly left Scotland on 4th position in the qualifying group.
In conclusion, we can take a look at the average odds for Rep. of Ireland. The odds for Republic of Ireland not to proceed into the Round of 16 are about 1,61 (last place in the group – 2,2). Republic of Ireland – under 3 points in the group – about 1/1.