Keane hoping to reach 50

But striker insists qualification is most important thing

Last updated: 6th September 2010   Subscribe to RSS Feed

Keane hoping to reach 50

Keane: Wants to reach 50 goals

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Robbie Keane is hopeful he can add to his international goal tally against Andorra on Tuesday to reach the 50-goal mark.

The Republic of Ireland captain currently has 43 goals from 101 games for his country, needing seven more to join an elite group of players who have made the magic 50 mark.

Keane missed several chances to get closer to in Irelands 1-0 win in their Euro 2012 qualifier against Armenia on Friday, but insisted that despite wanting to hit the target as much as he could, it did not matter who scored the goals as long as they qualified.

"It is, yes. I don't want to jump the gun too quickly, but now that I am climbing close to it, of course it would be great to achieve that," Keane responded when asked whether reaching 50 goals was a major target.

"To be in the bracket with the players who are already there and have already achieved that would be a great honour.

"But at the same time, there are still a few goals to go, so I wouldn't be thinking about that too much."

"At the end of the day, I never set targets. That would be very naïve of me and disrespectful to the other team.

"As a striker, it is always important to score goals and get your confidence up, but whether I score tomorrow or anyone else, the most important thing is the three points.

Not easy

"Our aim is to win every game by scoring as many goals as possible, but under different circumstances in different games, it is not as easy as you think.

"Certainly, international football now is not as easy as it used to be, even six, seven years ago. Teams are a lot tighter now."

The Tottenham forward admitted it was frustrating to have missed chances to score on Friday, but it was nothing new and that he had to move on to the next game.

"You just forget about it. It has happened to me loads of times before in the past and it will certainly happen to me in the future," the 30-year-old added.

"I will miss chances and I will score chances, but I never really let my head go down about things because another chance will always come along.

"As you get older, you get more experienced. When you are younger, you want to kill yourself sometimes, but as you get older, you realise that plenty more chances will come.