McGeever's career progressed to the extent that the English professional club Tottenham Hotspur invited him to train with their team in the summer of 1982 shortly after their FA Cup win. However, after only two weeks in London (where he trained under manager Keith Burkinshaw with 1978 FIFA World Cup winners Ossie Ardiles and Ricky Villa, as well as Glenn Hoddle, all three of whom were late back to their club as they had been playing in that summer's World Cup), McGeever returned to Ireland and injured one of his cruciate ligaments in a Gaelic football match in which he was not supposed to be playing. He had only returned from London for two nights when he heard that Seosamh Kelly was organising a Cloich Cheann Fhaola team to play a match against St Michael's at the Burn Road in Termon, and — ignoring his mother's advice to rest — off he went. McGeever then made matters worse by carrying on and, while contesting a header in the opening minutes of that season's first league game against Bohemians, "came down and the knee buckled under me" as he put it in a 2012 interview with the "Sunday Independent". He said in 2020: "At that time, no-one knew anything about cruciate ligaments". McGeever returned to England to have surgery performed upon him by a Professor Dandy. He would wear a bandage for the rest of his playing career and had a knee replacement in around 2013. Meanwhile, a now McGeeverless Tottenham went on to collect the 1983–84 UEFA Cup.