Will Keane's Journey: From Injury Setbacks to New Opportunities
On a warm night in May 2012, two young England strikers walked out for an Under-19 European Championship qualifier against Switzerland. If you were picking which one would be preparing for a World Cup semi-final a decade later, most eyes would have landed on Will Keane, not Harry Kane.
Back then, Keane’s path looked straight, smooth, inevitable.
“I'd never had any setbacks at that point,” he recalls in conversation with 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 twist.
Near the end of that game against Switzerland, Keane’s knee gave way. A major injury. Sixteen months gone. The kind of blow that doesn’t just interrupt a career; it changes its shape.
While Keane disappeared into the long, lonely grind of rehab, Kane went the other way. Loans at Norwich and Leicester, then a breakthrough at Tottenham. One striker accelerated into the elite. The other tried to learn how to walk properly again.
“It’s timing,” Keane says, without bitterness but with complete clarity. “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 World Cup dreams to PFA camp
As Kane steels himself for Argentina, Keane’s week looks very different. The 33-year-old is at Champneys Springs in Leicestershire, one of 45 out-of-contract players on the PFA’s 12-week pre-season camp.
It is football’s halfway house: part training ground, part audition room, part support network.
“A couple of lads I know did the camp last season and spoke really highly,” says Keane. “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.”
Keane has been here before. Out of contract. Uncertain. In 2020, as Covid hit and finances tightened, Ipswich chose not to trigger a one-year option. He drifted into the market at the worst possible moment.
Eventually, he returned to Wigan, one of eight clubs he has represented across 335 senior appearances and 85 goals. It was there, in the north-west, that he began to change not just how he played, but how he thought.
Injuries, Rashford and a brutal United goodbye
The first ACL tear would have tested anyone. Keane’s body, though, had more trauma in store.
In February 2016, starting an FA Cup tie for Manchester United at Shrewsbury, he “ripped his groin”. Three days later, with Keane on a plane to the United States for surgery, United faced Midtjylland in the Europa League. Anthony Martial pulled out in the warm-up. A 17-year-old Marcus Rashford stepped in.
Given his debut by Louis van Gaal, Rashford scored twice. Then he hit another two in the Premier League against Arsenal days later. A star was born. A door quietly closed.
“I went to America for an operation, landed in Philadelphia, turned my phone on and saw he scored two more,” Keane says.
At 23, he knew. That was it for him at Old Trafford, the club he and his family loved, the place that had always felt like his natural destination.
He moved on, and on paper it looked like a break. Hull City, newly promoted to the Premier League. A fresh start at the top level.
It lasted six games.
Another ACL. Fourteen months out. Another season gone. Hull were relegated. The dressing room emptied. Harry Maguire to Leicester. Andy Robertson to Liverpool. Sam Clucas to Swansea. Careers kicked on.
For Keane, it was something else entirely.
“It was crushing,” he admits. “I missed the whole season, and we got relegated. A lot of the young lads still got good moves.”
He was left to piece together not just his fitness, but his belief.
Rewiring the mind
Keane had worked with sports psychologists before. He knew the language: resilience, positivity, focus. It wasn’t enough.
At Wigan he tried something different.
“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.
“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 is candid about how far his confidence fell.
“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.”
Kane, certainty and the thin line at the top
While Keane rebuilt, his old strike partner became England captain and one of the most prolific forwards of his generation. From the outside, Kane’s rise looks relentless, almost inevitable. Keane knows how misleading that can be.
“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?” says Keane.
“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.”
It is a reminder of how thin the margins are. One player’s injury is another’s opportunity. One man’s 16 months out is another’s breakout season. The sliding doors never really stop.
A career still moving
Keane finished last season on loan at Reading before leaving Preston when his contract expired. Now he is back in the shop window, boots laced, GPS vest on, data pinging its way to recruitment departments up and down the country.
He is calm, not complacent.
“There's been a few chats. I'm sure they're aware of me,” he says. “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.”
At 33, he believes he has “a few years” left. He has not given up on adding to his five senior caps for the Republic of Ireland either, having followed the opposite path to twin brother Michael by representing England at youth level before switching allegiance to his father’s homeland.
“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,” he says. “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 chases history on the biggest stage, Will Keane chases something just as precious in its own way: one more contract, one more chance, one more season to show that the story which once seemed written for him is not quite finished yet.
