There is nothing novel about a person heading to Israel in search of a fresh start. You may recall a story about this chap called Moses who looked for the Promised Land while wandering 40 years around a desert.
Robbie Keane will know how that feels. He had six months in Middlesbrough as Jonathan Woodgate's assistant.
It’s been onwards and sideways since then. A man called Big Sam gave him a Premier League meal ticket. Unfortunately, after getting to use just four vouchers, the dinner tray emptied.
None of that matters now. Maccabi Tel Aviv have called.
They’re Israel’s biggest and most successful club, have twice made it to the Champions League group stages, have won their national title 23 times, have a ground with a capacity of 29,400, and a team with a tradition of entertaining.
What’s not to like? Well, there is the fact they have gone through seven managerial changes already this decade, 29, including caretakers, this century.
So no matter how you look at this arrangement, it is hard not to be sceptical.
For starters, Robbie Keane is a managerial rookie and in this cut-throat profession, a disproportionate number of first-time bosses discover their opening job doubles up as their last.
Will that be the fate of Ireland’s record goalscorer and caps holder?
The answer to that question centres around how quickly he adapts to this tough new world.
You see up until very recently, Keane's life has been one of certainty.
He was a child star who grew up accustomed to being offered things, from the scout who promised him Premier League trials, to the coach who selected him for representative sides, to the agent who could cut him a deal.
As the teenage years gave way to adulthood, nothing really changed. Yes, there were more lucrative deals to consider, bigger homes to live in, better clubs to play for, but the premise remained the same: People wanted to give him things.
And it stayed that way until he was 40-years-old. Then, for the first time in his life he was unwanted. Okay, he had an absurdly generous contract with the FAI but the man who had given him that, John Delaney, was disgraced.
So, Keane didn’t have a power-broker to turn to when Stephen Kenny, the Ireland manager, turned him away.
Suddenly, for the first time in his life, Robbie Keane discovered what it was like to sit by your phone when it doesn’t ring. While there’s a limited appeal to seeing Big Sam’s number flash up on your screen, when an English chap called Ben Mansford dialled in, well, that was different.
Mansford, you see, is a kingmaker who hired and fired Mick McCarthy and quite a few other managers at Blackpool. Now he’s the chief executive of Maccabi Tel Aviv and about to become one of the most important people in Keane’s life.
So are others the Dubliner has only recently met, Maccabi’s owner from Canada, their Cypriot chairman, the Israeli fitness coaches, scouts and medical staff he'll work with, and then the multi-national squad of players whose performances will dictate whether Robbie Keane will be seen as a one-hit wonder or a managerial star of the future.
The expectancy that he’ll fail stems from the fact that nearly all managers do.
But it’s not just that.
Those who know Keane well reference his unbreakable self-belief and his genuine passion for the game which has probably never been fully respected in this country.
But those who know management know the pitfalls.
Key to his success will be his choice of staff, the match-day analysts who know the tactical nuances of Israel’s 14-team top division, and who must possess powers of persuasion to convince Keane to pre-empt problems as well as react to them.
The fact is that the modern game tests managers in a way the sport never did in the 80s or 90s. With technological advances, a team’s pattern of play can be dissected thoroughly within a week of a fixture, or - by the very best coaches - within 45 minutes of a match starting.
The game’s smarter bosses acknowledge this fact and sometimes overthink their tactics to the extent that they switch their strategy at half-time in anticipation of how their opposing coach will react to the first-half gameplan.
Is Robbie Keane ready for this world?
Is he prepared to confront dissatisfied players, to console under-confident ones, to buy the right ones, to ruthlessly get rid of those who don’t fit his system?
You’d imagine so, for those are comparatively simple tasks for any manager. What’s harder is maintaining control of a dressing room when older players within your squad begin to realise they are losing their grip on the team.
Keane's name - as a Premier League goalscoring centurion - will initially help. Players may sign for him because of the player he was, rather than the manager he now is.
But having a big name only takes you so far. Sooner rather than later, Keane will have to convince the selfish ones within his squad to become selfless, to invest in the team not just in themselves.
The players he picks will be easy to manage; the ones he leaves out will not.
A warm welcome can turn cold pretty quickly in any dressing room and that reality is not unique to Robbie Keane. That’s a worldwide problem for sport coaches.
So too is a dissatisfied fan base.
Managers who have dealt with this problem have spoken of the stress it causes. “It lives with you,” the former England manager, Graham Taylor once told me. “You can’t escape it. And you make bad decisions because of it.”
Another manager, speaking anonymously, spoke about how a disapproving fan base brought him to ‘a dark place’. “It’s never out of your head. I lost my appetite in my final weeks in the job. I had a permanent headache, an ulcer in my stomach. When fans turn against you, the job becomes a nightmare.”
And when an owner turns against you, the job becomes part of your past, and given that Maccabi’s owner has a reputation for impatience, you really have to wonder why anyone would want to enter this unforgiving world.
To figure out why, we go back to a conversation Keane had with a group of Irish journalists four years ago. “I love being around people, love being around football," he said. "I don’t know any other job. It is all I have known since I was 15.”
The possessor of a supersized ego will help him because managers need that trait to cushion against the flak they’ll constantly receive. Another aid will be his financial security which will reduce a sense of panic if results go south.
The easy thing is to scoff, to look at the fact he is an untested manager entering a league he doesn’t know, working under a trigger-happy owner.
So, the best thing Robbie Keane can do is fail the best way he possibly can. That way there’ll be another job some place else and another chance to fail better.
That's the reality of management. Fair play to him for giving it a shot.
