About a Roy

And so, as the countdown to The Iran Experience nears its conclusion, we find ourselves all playing not only the waiting game, but also, to lift a typically pithy phrase from Van Morrison, the healing game. The process in question being the one which we hope will somehow befall Roy Keane before this Saturday.

The potential absence of Keane from this weekend’s festivities has evened up the odds in a quite stunning manner. With him there, we would expect Ireland to hoover up the Iranians with the minimum of fuss. Without him, things look, if not black, then decidedly brown.

Foul Play has regarded Keane as the best player in the world for quite some time now; probably since around the middle of Man United’s Treble-winning season of 1998-1999. Indeed, I have often pondered why FIFA’s annual World Player of the Year gala dinners in Monte Carlo have always been a Roy-free zone.

These dreary prize-nights are invariably a carve up between any three from Figo, Beckham, Zidane and Rivaldo, with Keane’s name insultingly low down the shortlist in 73rd place, if it is there at all.

Perhaps FIFA’s people are simply ignoring footballing realities in favour of commercial ones, knowing that Keane, a contrary bastard at the best of times, cannot be trusted to hang around for the handshake photo-calls with the likes of Sepp Blatter and Pelé that invariably accompany these wretched events.

The argument can be best summarised by saying that, if a global XI had to be selected to face the Martians in a one-off eliminator, with the planet’s fate in the balance, picking Zidane or Figo would give you an excellent chance of winning – but picking Keane would give you an even better chance of not losing.

On a normal day, his lungs and fire add at least an extra 30 to 40 percent to Ireland’s performance. And on a good day – such as the draw with Portugal at Lansdowne Road last June – he more or less plays the opposition on his own.

Without Keane, the Irish team is a bit like the weakling schoolkid whose strongly-built elder brother, normally his protector and guardian in the vicious maelstrom of the playground, is sick at home with the flu, and whose tormentor is now approaching at speed from the far end of the yard. In short, we don’t tend to beat good teams unless we have Keane there.

But are we playing a good team this weekend, or merely an ordinary one? What are we to make of Johnny Iran, at all, at all? That is a good question.

Eurosport covered the Persians’ two games against the United Arab Emirates, and the overall impression gleaned was of a bunch of players who have an almost pathological obsession with carefully rolling the ball around on the edge of the opposition area until something finally happens.

They certainly have many of the Irish players licked for skill and technique (although, given that we are dealing with a squad containing Lee Carsley and Richard Dunne, that ain’t saying a whole pile).

We should also be wary of accusing them of potentially lacking in intestinal fortitude, for this was the team that took all manner of punishment from Australia in Melbourne four years ago, soaked up an astonishing amount of pressure, and then stole two outrageous goals on the counter-attack to qualify for France 98 on away goals. Whatever else Iran may be, they don’t strike you as quitters.

On balance, it was probably slightly preferable to drawing, say, the Turks again, but this assignment is almost as awkward in a very different way, purely because we don’t really know quite what we are up against here.

I’m sure everybody would have preferred a nice, untaxing stroll in the Abu Dhabi sunshine against the UAE, but to be hankering for such a weak side as your opponents in a World Cup play-off would be to expect good fortune on a positively Sven-Goran Erikssonian scale.

If we do get past this lot, the paucity of real talent in the Irish squad (as opposed to the starting eleven) is such that there will be some seriously ordinary footballers sitting on the plane to the Far East.

When McCarthy is able to put his first-choice eleven on the field, it looks decent enough, with the added bonus of Dean Kiely, Steve Finnan and Matt Holland on the bench as trustworthy and reliable cover.

But after that, we enter a nightmarish twilight world. Nationwide League stalwarts. Journeymen. Jobsworths. “Good pros”. And even a few bad ones. Ireland are currently spread so thin that Keith O’Neill has not given up hope of getting a game.

We probably won’t be as stretched for cover as Northern Ireland were at the 1982 World Cup, when they brought a League of Ireland player (Felix Healy of Derry City) to Spain, and, better yet, gave him a run-out as a substitute against Honduras. But it is getting that way.

Of course, we can still do Iran over, even without Roy Keane. But we don’t really want to be thinking about that.