Kevin Doyle has admitted that Robbie Keane's "incomparable" goalscoring exploits for the Republic of Ireland may never be beaten.
The 33-year-old LA Galaxy striker has scored a record 62 goals in 131 internationals, 16 more than the total claimed by the remainder of the current squad. However, Keane will not meet up with his team-mates until they head to America next week, and that means there will be opportunities for others to stake a claim when the Republic face Italy at Craven Cottage today.
But Doyle said: "No-one in the world is really going to match Robbie's record - or very, very few ever - so you are comparing us against someone who has a record that is incomparable to 99 per cent of strikers in the world.
"Even the best strikers in the world don't have his goalscoring record at international level, so realistically we are not going to match that. But we can bring other things to the team and other things to the pitch that maybe he can't."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article