The wait goes on, with Martin O’Neill appearing to be wholly uninterested in the Ireland job, Mick McCarthy (perhaps wisely) hedging his bets and the Noel King Era unlikely to last much longer. We now face the prospect of sitting on our arses next summer watching the likes of Bosnia, Greece and potentially even Iceland battling it out for football’s ultimate prize, as opposed to merrily drinking ourselves dizzy on Copacabana Beach.

To miss out on any World Cup is painful; to miss out on one in Brazil is heartbreaking. The penny is slowly starting to drop with most Ireland fans that we really don’t have anything close to the playing talent we did in 1991 or 2001, but this doesn’t mean that we can’t or shouldn’t aspire to reaching major tournaments.
Kinger’s short-lived reign was chiefly notable for an extremely unsightly spat between the caretaker boss and Eamon Dunphy, which reflected well on neither man. King’s tetchy interview with Tony O’Donoghue didn’t show him in a particularly brilliant light and there wasn’t a vast amount of evidence from either the Germany or Kazakhstan games to suggest that he was well-qualified to take over in the long term. But he was thoroughly entitled to take exception to the highly personal nature of the abuse meted out by Dunphy, which reached an all-time low when he referred to King as ‘tactically illiterate’. The manager retorted that RTÉ’s panel have long since departed the realms of genuinely serious football analysis and become a ‘comedy show’.
Dunphy is unfailingly entertaining to listen to and undoubtedly doesn’t do RTÉ’s viewing figures any harm, but it’s impossible to disagree with King’s evaluation of the ex-Millwall man’s value as a pundit. Vast sweeping generalisations; a very selective approach to the facts; an endless willingness to re-write history; a general insistence that all football teams are basically dreadful and that teams who win things owe their success to not being quite as awful as the rest; a wearyingly predictable tendency to fixate on the non-selection of certain players and imply that they’re many miles better than they actually are – these are tolerable quirks which most fans accept as Eamon just being Eamon. Apparently premeditated attempts to tarnish people’s professional integrity are a different matter entirely.
It seems only fair at this stage to suggest that, with meaningless friendlies against Poland and Hungary in the offing, Dunphy should be given the Ireland manager’s job, so he can demonstrate to lesser mortals like Big Jack, Mick McCarthy, Brian Kerr, Trapattoni et al exactly how it should be done. After all, if we had started Wes Hoolahan and Andy Reid in Cologne, we would obviously have beaten the Germans. Appointing him as Ireland boss would at least afford him the opportunity to prove beyond doubt that he has all the answers. And, in the deeply unlikely event that results were ever to go wrong, it would be fascinating to watch him explaining why in the post-match interviews. Ideally, RTÉ could then look into the possibility of inviting Noel King, Trap and Charlton to take over as panelists.
More seriously, Foul Play must admit at this point that I’ve no idea who would be the best man for the Ireland job, and no great confidence that whoever gets the gig will be able to effect a dramatic turn-around in our fortunes. With at least ten months to go before the next competitive fixture, a swift appointment isn’t necessarily urgent, but it would be nice if the process accelerated a little this side of Christmas in order to dispel the suspicion that the heavily in-debt FAI’s No.1 priority is saving themselves a few quid in wages.
Our neighbours England made the cut for next summer’s global feast of football reasonably comfortably. For the first time in living memory, their public appear to have cottoned onto the team’s general place in the global pecking order, and the ‘England Expects’ guff that has dragged them down in previous years no longer looks like being an issue. His ill-advised ‘feed the monkey’ comment notwithstanding, Roy Hodgson has repeatedly proved himself an astute manager (an undistinguished six-month spell at Liverpool aside), there is a significant reservoir of youngish talent emerging, and though all known history suggests that they are basically a last-16 or quarter-final force, prices of 25/1 may be worth more than a second glance.
Every single Latin American World Cup to date has been won by a team from that part of the world, but the pattern surely has to be broken some time – and at this point, I can’t ignore appetising quotes of 11/2 for Spain, who have been by far the best team in the world for at least six years now and show no sign at all of losing their way. Brazil’s current squad inspires respect rather than awe; Argentina haven’t made it to the business end of the World Cup since 1990; Germany managed to concede seven goals to Sweden in the space of two qualifiers; there is no value left any more in backing trendy Belgium, currently the hipsters’ team of choice; and Holland initially look intriguing at 20/1 until you recall that they lost three out of three at last summer’s Euros and have an established tradition of toxic in-fighting.
If you want a dark horse, I would respectfully point out that although Croatia still have to get past Iceland in a play-off, quotes of 175/1 are absolutely senseless for a nation with their reserves of talent. But Spain it is, for now. I will revisit the subject in six months’ time, when it’s all about to kick off, and the heartache of not qualifying has receded a little.
In the interim, Eamo for Emperor. You know it makes a strange sort of sense.