He made his debut in the Premier League and played under Harry Redknapp, was kept out of the Sweden side by Zlatan Ibrahimovic, got out of Tel Aviv before mortars started landing and now shares a dressing room with a World Cup winner in India, where sacred cows are as big an obstacle as defenders.

Meet Somerset lad James Keene, the striker who was touted for a call-up to the Swedish national team – his adopted country where he is a household name – but is now one of just three Englishmen playing in the new Indian Super League, which kicked off this week.

Indeed, the 28-year-old starred as NorthEast United – including former Spain defender Joan Capdevila - opened with a 1-0 win over Kerala Blasters, for whom both Michael Chopra and Keene's former Portsmouth team-mate David James play.

James Keene in action for NorthEast United in the inauguaral Indian Super League

Keene's NorthEast United team beat the Kerala Blasters in their opening match of the tournament

The eight-team league – where famous cricketers and Bollywood actors are club owners - runs until December and marquee names such as Alessandro Del Piero, Robert Pires and Freddie Ljungberg are expected to draw crowds totalling nearly three million over the course of the inaugural edition of the tournament.

Last season, Keene was the only English player representing a foreign club in the Europa League or Champions League. In fact, he is Elfsborg’s top European scorer of all-time.

But this in an altogether different challenge, on and off the pitch. Forget traffic jams on the M27 or clearing snow from your driveway in 24-hour darkness in Sweden, the journey to training in the city of Guwahati is like the tale of Noah’s Ark.

‘Getting around the place is mad – we’ve driven through floods, farmers walking their cows, goats, and sheep everywhere, 10 cars in two lanes, it’s crazy,’ says Keene, whose Swedish wife Catrine remains in Boras – just outside of Gothenburg - finishing her interior-design studies.

Keene (centre) in Champions League action for Elfsborg, where he spent six seasons, against Celtic

Former Liverpool star Luis Garcia (right) featured in Kolkata's win against Mumbai City in the opening game

Former Spain left back Joan Capdevila unveils NorthEast United's new strip

‘But cows are Holy and you get a £400 fine if you hit one! I would never, ever drive here in my life and thankfully we have drivers. But they use their arms as indicators and never stop tooting the horn, it’s 24/7 – they use the horn more than the brake.

‘Then there will be a dad driving a moped with the mum on the back holding the two kids. Every car is ruined because they just hit each other all the time.’

So how did Keene end up in a cattle jam in India?

A graduate of Portsmouth’s academy, he broke into the first team in 2005 before enjoying a goal-laden loan spell at GAIS in Sweden, managed by former Sheffield Wednesday defender Roland Nilsson, who once saved Keene by blasting the heaters in his car when the frostbitten rookie first arrived in the country.

Keene at a NorthEast United training session in Guwahati with security guards

Hitting a cow in India could land you with a fine of £400 as they are the country's sacred animal

Sweden striker Zlatan Ibrahimovic

Champions Elfsborg made a permanent offer and he spent six seasons there, becoming fluent in Swedish, meeting his future wife and scoring enough goals to generate a clamour for nationalisation and a call-up. ‘Zlatan plays in my position though, and he’s not bad,’ he laughs when that subject is brought up.

There was a loan period back at Pompey last year and a spell at Israel’s Bnei Yehuda Tel Aviv before the offer of the ISL.

‘I loved Tel Aviv,’ he says. ‘It’s so vibrant and young. I was a bit nervous but the war was very calm while I was there.

‘My friend at Maccabi Tel-Aviv, Rade Prica, who played for Sunderland, he and his family had to be in a shelter for two weeks and it was chaos, he’s never experienced anything like it.

‘But thankfully we left just before all of that kicked off. Although when we first got to India it wasn’t easy.

‘Agents can make things sound very glamorous and we went to Shillong - a small village at the top of a mountain where one of the owners is from - to do some promotion work.

‘You’d be lucky if there were three bars, no internet and there was absolutely nothing to do. After three days Catrine went home!’

Now, however, Keene resides in a five-star luxury hotel. Although he admits the contrast between wealth and poverty is stark.

‘We’ve got a good training pitch and stadium. But that is the only good pitch in an area of five million people – the rest are terrible,’ he says.

‘Grassroots football just isn’t there. Cricket is fantastic – there are nets and pitches everywhere.

‘But this is the aim of the ISL – trying to get football out there to the kids. They are distributing hundreds of thousands of footballs. But I look out of my hotel window and see poverty.

‘Kids playing bare footed on a hard, mud pitch. Cows walk around on the street. The people don’t have proper clothes, they’re just wearing rags basically. It’s quite a dirty country and there is rubbish everywhere.

Keene on his way to training in Guwahati as he makes his way through floods

‘They don’t seem to care. When we finish training they just go and throw all of the water bottles in the river.

‘Just past our swimming pool are tin shelters where people live. The extremes here are massive. You feel sorry for the kids, they’re not even playing with a proper football.

‘But then they come to watch us train and they’re so happy to be there – it warms your heart.’

What about the football? Keene and Co are currently second and have two home games before a trip to Peter Reid’s Mumbai City.

‘You have to split the team – six international players and five Indian players,’ he explains.

‘The young Indian lads have a lot to learn. They only start playing when they’ re 15 so they don’t understand football like we do, like the concept of taking the ball to the corner if you’re winning late on.

‘But they’re improving, even in the five weeks I’ve been here they’ve got better.

‘Our first game was incredible, 35,000 people were there and it was live on TV (coverage can reach 650 million people). There were fireworks, bands and all sorts going on. The younger lads were a bit nervous but once we settled we did well and it was brilliant to win.’

Keene's Swedish wife Catrine is still back home in Boras, just outside Gothenburg

Keene and his wife Catrine in Sweden, where the footballer hopes to settle one day

Keene is not about to add Hindi to his CV, but with Capdevila, striker Koke and former Sporting Lisbon defender Miguel Garcia for comrades, he admits Spanish is an option.

‘Capdevila is amazing,’ he says. ‘There are so few footballers who have won a World Cup – to be sitting in a dressing-room with him is incredible.

‘After the first game we sat and had a beer together. We were laughing about how much media we’ve been doing to promote the league out here – he’s spent more time on a plane than he has on the pitch. It’s surreal.’

Does he, though, ever regret not pursuing a career within these shores?

‘When I left Portsmouth it was just to get some first-team football and try something different in a new country, it was exciting,’ he reflects.

‘But then they had their financial troubles and all of the young players got a chance in the Premier League. Marc Wilson, Asmir Begovic, the lads I played with, started to get an opportunity.

Asmir Begovic was at Portsmouth at the same time as Keene and now plays for Stoke

‘I do think, “What if?”. If I had stayed what could I have become? I was doing well, I was one of their best young players. Maybe if I’d stayed six months more things could have been very, very different.

‘But I love Sweden and the plan is to settle down there eventually and stay in the game in coaching.

‘My mum doesn’t know what to say about it all – she thinks I’m mad. But my dad thinks it’s brilliant and he tries to watch as many games as possible.

‘So I’ve no real regrets. I’ve played at a good level, I’ve seen the world and had so many experiences I wouldn’t have had if I’d stayed in England. I love it here.’

The car horns apart, Keene is having a blast.