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“I always felt I would be a Manchester United player,” Michael Keane says of the circumstances that explain why a player Sir Alex Ferguson, and many others at Old Trafford, regarded as one of their great hopes is now in the claret and blue of Burnley. “The coaches used to say to me that sometimes they would send other players out on loan to help them get a move but that was never the case with me. They saw it as experience for me because they thought I was good enough to get in the first team when I came back. But then obviously Sir Alex left and it all changed.”
For Keane, one of the players prominently in Gareth Southgate’s thoughts, there will always be a tinge of regret about what happened next, even if this talented, ambitious centre-half is also keen to emphasise how the move to Turf Moor has helped all that rich potential to flower.
He and his twin brother, Will, were born in the year that Ferguson won the first of his 13 Premier League titles. The two boys grew up dreaming of playing at Old Trafford and their father had a season ticket on the old Scoreboard End for more than 40 years. “Dad used to go every game and whenever he had a spare ticket me and Will used to fight over who would go with him. It was always United.”
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All of which probably explains why, at the age of 21, Keane had mixed emotions when Burnley made their first attempt to lure him away from Old Trafford. “The first call I got was that Burnley wanted to take me on a permanent deal,” Keane recalls. “I didn’t really want to go permanently at first and pushed for it just to be a loan to begin with.
“Burnley were in the Premier League and I thought that if I did well it would help my chances of proving to Louis van Gaal that I was good enough. And I did do well. It just wasn’t enough [for Van Gaal]. So I ended up signing permanently and I was really happy to do that because I’ve loved it ever since. I do feel sometimes that things could have been different [at United] but I don’t regret anything because the move has definitely been the best thing for me.”
Now 24, Keane’s form over the past two years makes it clear why many people at Old Trafford suspect United should have persevered with him. Southgate, a man who knows a thing or two about what it takes to be a successful centre-half, has already given Keane his first call-up into the England squad. Rio Ferdinand eulogises about him and Sean Dyche, another man qualified when it comes to the art of defending, has made the £2m bargain a mainstay of Burnley’s back four.
“He’s been a massive help,” Keane says. “He’s shown the faith to get me when I was a young player and, as an old centre-half himself, I think he saw a part of my game that I was good at, being a ball player, but also that he could improve my defending. Every so often he will pull me into his office to give me bits of advice. I’ve played a lot of games and I feel like I’ve come on a lot playing for him.”
Keane has helped one of the pre-season relegation favourites to 12th in the Premier League and the bad news for Lincoln City, their opponents in the FA Cup on Saturday, is that Dyche’s team have the best home record of any top-division side bar Chelsea, Tottenham Hotspur and Arsenal. “Lincoln have done really well to get this far in the competition,” Keane says of the team who have already knocked out Ipswich Town and Brighton & Hove Albion. “Obviously we won’t take them lightly but it’s a game, at home, we feel we should be winning, and a great chance to progress. And then, suddenly, you’re one game from Wembley.
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“We have been unbelievable at home and we showed that again last weekend against Chelsea – 1-0 down after barely five minutes against the team that looks like they are going to be champions. I couldn’t put my finger on what it is, but we just find a way – it’s hard work, first and foremost, but that’s the bare minimum. Plus our fans at Turf Moor never get on our backs. They’ve never, while I’ve been there, had a moan at the team.”
It’s a special bond [with twin brother Will], like best friends, and weird things do happen. We might speak at exactly the same time and say exactly the same thing – little things like that.
The following weekend it is a trip to Hull City and Keane’s only regret is that he will not be facing his twin. “Will was always a special player,” he says. “I was never at his level. I was always fighting to prove myself, whereas Will was a natural – a striker, always scoring goals, unbelievable touch, finishing, speed, movement. Before his injury, he was probably the best player I’ve played with at our age.”
The injury he is referring to came when his twin was playing for England Under-19s against Switzerland in June 2012. “A bad turn, his knee twisted and just gave way,” Michael says. The diagnosis was ruptured cruciate ligaments, the injury every footballer fears the most, and then, cruelly, the same happened last November, within three months of Mike Phelan, then the Hull manager, going back to United to sign him.
“It’s been really hard for him,” Michael says. “People ask sometimes if, being twins, when he is injured I feel his pain. That doesn’t happen but we’re really close. It’s a special bond, like best friends, and weird things do happen. We might speak at exactly the same time and say exactly the same thing – little things like that. But when we were growing up we could also be really competitive together. Everything we played we were always fighting afterwards if someone lost. That competitive edge brought us both on.”
The dream, ultimately, is for two boys who grew up kicking a ball around on the playing fields of Heaton Moor, just south of Manchester, to play together for England and it does not need long in Keane’s company to realise his dedication to the sport.
One story he tells is of the disappointment when United offered him only a part-time scholarship on the same day Will earned a professional contract. “For the next year I went to United for one-on-one sessions after school. That was the year I developed a lot and started to feel really confident. In the end, I was thinking: ‘I’m doing well here, I’ve improved and I’m probably better than a lot of these players so it would be stupid to go back to school.’ I went back to school for a week. We had a school football competition and I quit the next day.”
Keane, bright and likable, still passed A-levels in physics, chemistry and biology, studying by himself while also convincing Ferguson that he deserved a shot at the first team. “I think he liked me,” Keane says, recalling his debut, aged 18. “It was just disappointing after the change of manager that I didn’t get a real chance. I played a bit in pre-season and then there was one terrible game for all of us – and that was it.”
The game he means goes back to August 2014, a 4-0 defeat at Milton Keynes Dons in the Capital One Cup, and to put it into context there is only player from United’s team that night – David de Gea – who has not been moved on. Keane remembers in Van Gaal’s debrief the following morning the manager was “killing everyone” but what he did not realise at the time was that it would be the last occasion they spoke.
“After that, I was on international duty with the Under-21s. It was transfer-deadline day and I got a phone call saying Burnley wanted to take me. It was a bit harsh [from Van Gaal], judging me on one game, but I suppose when you are coming through at Man United you know if you get that chance you need to take it. I did well in the other games I played, it was just that one game when everyone was bad.”
Keane, the subject of a £15m bid from Leicester City last summer, has flourished ever since – a popular member of the Burnley dressing room – and his form has taken him to the edge of the England set-up.
“The first call to let me know was from Sean Dyche,” Keane says of his first involvement in Southgate’s squad, for the games against Malta and Slovenia last October. “Gareth Southgate had rung him and thought that, as my club manager, he should be the one who told me. Then five minutes later I got a second call, this time from Southgate. I was driving at the time – and I had to pull over. I was in shock. I wasn’t expecting it at all but I’ve had a taste of it now and it’s something I want more of.”