We announce the successor to Dutchman Pascal Jansen to lead our 35-time champion and 24-time cup winner team, as the 146-time national team player of the Republic of Ireland Robbie Keane has signed on Monday. The new head coach arrived in Budapest on Sunday evening and will leave on Tuesday to join our team at the training camp in Spain.

As a former top striker, his footballing career has included spells with Italian side Internazionale, while in the English Premier League, he has played for Coventry City, Leeds United, Tottenham, Liverpool, West Ham United and Aston Villa, as well as playing for Scottish side Celtic, Los Angeles Galaxy in the United States and Atlético Kolkata in India. The 44-year-old football professional scored more than 320 goals in 730 club games, won the English Football League Cup with Tottenham, and is a three-time MLS champion with LA Galaxy. He scored 68 goals for his national team, making him the record holder in goal scoring in his national team, and played for the Republic of Ireland at the 2002 World Cup and the 2012 and 2016 European Championships. The former football player appeared 146 times in the national team of the Republic of Ireland.

He made his coaching debut in March 2018 as the player-manager of ATK, India, and in November he joined the national team of the Republic of Ireland as assistant coach to national captain Mick McCarthy. From June 2019, he worked alongside his former team-mate Jonathan Woodgate as assistant manager of the EFL Championship team of Middlesbrough. He left Middlesbrough after the outbreak of the pandemic, and completed his UEFA coaching qualifications, receiving the UEFA Pro Licence in 2020.

He joined Sam Allardyce's staff at Leeds United in the spring of 2023 but failed to keep the club in the Premier League and left to take up his first head coaching appointment as manager of Maccabi Tel Aviv in Israel. In the 2023-2024 season, he won the championship and the Toto Cup (the local League Cup) with Maccabi. His team played in the UEFA European Conference League, where they won their group and reached the last 16, where they were stopped by Greek Olympiacos – who also beat us. Maccabi won 4-1 in Piraeus, but in the second leg in a neutral venue – Bačka Topola – the Greeks won by the same margin, scoring two more goals in extra time to progress, and later won the trophy.

Keane left Maccabi after one season and has been without a club since the summer.