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Will Keane's Journey: From Promising Talent to PFA Camp
Will Keane was supposed to be here.
If you’d watched England’s Under-19s in May 2012, you might have thought so too. Two young strikers led the line against Switzerland in a European Championship qualifier: Will Keane and Harry Kane. Back then, the more polished, more highly rated prospect wore United red, not Spurs white. The logical bet for a future World Cup semi-final week was the lad from Manchester United’s academy.
Keane remembers that version of himself clearly.
“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.”
Then came the tackle that changed everything.
Near the end of that game against Switzerland, Keane suffered a serious knee injury. A major ACL problem. Sixteen months out. Sixteen months while his contemporaries surged forward and he stood still.
While Keane rehabbed, Kane went on loan to Norwich and Leicester, then forced his way into Tottenham’s first team. One career accelerated. The other stalled.
“It’s timing,” Keane says. “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.”
From United dreams to PFA camp
As Kane prepares for Argentina and another tilt at history, Keane is in very different surroundings.
He’s at Champneys Springs in Leicestershire, one of 45 players on the PFA’s 12-week pre-season camp for out-of-contract professionals. No packed stadiums here, no global spotlight. Just pitches, gyms, and a group of players trying to earn one more chance.
At 33, Keane isn’t done.
He talks about having “a few years” left, about the possibility of adding to his five Republic of Ireland caps after switching allegiance from England, where he played all the way up to Under-21 level.
“A couple of lads I know did the camp last season and spoke really highly,” he 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.”
He’s been here before. Out of contract, waiting.
In 2020, as Covid gripped football’s finances, Ipswich chose not to trigger a one-year option. Keane was left in limbo. Eventually he returned to Wigan, one of eight clubs he has represented in a career that now stands at 335 senior appearances and 85 goals.
It was around that time he began to change the way he thought about the game – and about himself.
Rashford’s rise, Keane’s rupture
The first ACL at United was brutal. The second big blow was cruel.
In February 2016, Keane started for Manchester United in an FA Cup tie at Shrewsbury. He “ripped his groin” that night. Three days later, with Keane sidelined, a 17-year-old Marcus Rashford found himself on the bench for a Europa League tie against Midtjylland.
Anthony Martial pulled up in the warm-up. Rashford came in, scored twice, then hit another two on his Premier League debut against Arsenal.
Keane watched the explosion of a new star from an ocean away.
“I went to America for an operation, landed in Philadelphia, turned my phone on and saw he scored two more,” he recalls.
At 23, he knew. His Manchester United story was over. This was the club he and his family supported, the place where he was meant to become a first-team regular. Suddenly, that door had closed.
He moved to Hull, newly promoted to the Premier League. A fresh start, a top-flight platform. In his sixth game, disaster struck again: another ACL injury, another 14 months out.
“It was crushing,” he says. “I missed the whole season, and we got relegated. A lot of the young lads still got good moves; Harry Maguire went to Leicester, Andy Robertson went to Liverpool, Sam Clucas to Swansea.”
They climbed. He started again.
Rebuilding the mind
For Keane, the physical damage was obvious. The mental scars took longer to understand.
“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,” he 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.”
That shift, he believes, came too late to change his trajectory at the very top – but not too late to change him.
“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.
“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.”
The other Kane
While Will Keane searches for his next club, his old England youth strike partner is chasing a different kind of completion: the final pieces of a legacy.
His assessment of Harry Kane is strikingly clear.
“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?” Keane says.
“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 Kane is England’s captain. The other is a free agent on a PFA camp, trying to catch the eye of scouts through an app and a string of pre-season friendlies. Both, in different ways, are still fighting for something.
One more move
After finishing last season on loan at Reading, Keane left Preston when his contract expired. There is no bitterness in his voice, just a calm realism that only experience and hard knocks can teach.
He expects opportunities to come, if not now, then when the pressure rises.
“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, he straddles two identities.
“It's a hard one because I played for England up until Under-21s, and then seniors for the Republic of Ireland, so I've got a foot in both camps.
“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.”
So while Harry Kane leads England into another defining week, Will Keane runs, lifts, and visualises at a training camp in Leicestershire, chasing one more contract, one more chance to show the player he always believed he could be.
The sliding door closed years ago. The question now is simpler, and in some ways harder: how far can he still push it open from here?
