Soccer:Roy Keane has turned down an offer to manage Turkish Super Lig club Kasimpasa SK. It is understood the former Republic of Ireland and Manchester United captain does not want to relocate his family to Istanbul .
Keane travelled to Turkey for talks with the club earlier this week and was shown around the ground and facilities by officials before being offered the job to succeed Metin Diyadin. The former Fenerbahce player was recently sacked by Kasimpasa despite winning promotion from the second tier last year and leading them to second in the league this season.
Sources at the Istanbul club have confirmed, however, the Corkman will not be taking over the reins because of the upheaval it would cause his family. Keane and his wife Theresa have five children.
Keane's trip to Istanbul on Monday followed a confident assessment of the situation from Kasimpasa's vice president Hasan Hilmi Oksuz, who told Turkey’s Anadolu Agency a deal had been agreed with the 41-year-old.
“We reached an agreement with Keane,” he said. “He will be in Istanbul tomorrow [Monday] if nothing extraordinary happens. We will benefit from his experiences right into our vision. We believe he can lead this club to the glorious results.”
His bold prediction was was ill-advised, perhaps, and certainly premature. The news is likely to fuel speculation surrounding Keane and the vacant manager's position at Blackburn Rovers after Scotsman Steve Kean claimed he was "forced out" of Ewood Park last Friday.
Having spent the vast majority of his playing career at United the Lancashire area is familiar to Keane and his family, though there has been no indication from club owners Venkys as to whether Keane is on their shortlist or not.
Given the Irishman's turbulent relationships with both Ellis Short at Sunderland and Marcus Evans at Ipswich, he and the Indian poultry magnates at Blackburn Rovers would appear, on the face of it, to be strange bedfellows.
Under their watch, Steve Kean was expected to spend a couple of days each month travelling to and from the family estate on the hills outside Pune in western India to provide updates to Anuradha Desai, widely regarded as the driving force behind the Venky’s business empire.
Istanbul, by comparison, is a hop and a skip away.
Keane has been on the managerial market since January 2011 when he was sacked by Ipswich. He guided Sunderland to promotion from the Championship in 2007 before eventually standing down in December 2008, halfway through a disappointing second season in the top flight.
He has more recently been employed as a pundit on ITV.
