IN the sixteen years I have been watching football, I have never seen anything simultaneously so hilarious and so poignant as the closing moments of a World Cup qualifier between Finland and Hungary in October 1997.
On a rain-drenched night in Helsinki, the Finns were defending a one-nil lead that would have seen them into the World Cup play-offs, and they conceded a needless corner with seconds of stoppage-time to go. (The player who did so, Sami Hyypia, is now earning his wages at Liverpool.)
The Hungarian corner came across, and a mad scramble ensued in the crowded penalty box. Sebok of Hungary stabbed the ball towards the Finnish goal, where it was desperately hacked off the line by Mahlio. The clearance hit Mahlio s own goalkeeper, Teuvo Tepi Moilanen of Preston North End, squarely in the back, rebounded off him, and rolled gently into the net.
Cue surreal scenes of suicidal desolation among the 31,000 crowd. Moilanen buried his head in his hands and started walking towards the tunnel, not even bothering to wait for the restart of the game, while the Hungarians jubilantly mobbed each other near the corner flag.
The image of the forlorn Tepi again flitted idly across Foul Play s mind on Saturday night, when Goran Stavrevski already it sounds like a name from your nightmares made his majestic intervention after three minutes and 15 seconds of stoppage-time (count em).
We thought we had already endured our rightful quota of last-minute misery in this group, thanks to the merciless finishing skills of the cadaverous Davor Suker. We were wrong. As BB King put it, there is always one more time.
Do Ireland s footballers, like werewolves in reverse, somehow metamorphose into tackle-shy milksops whenever the clock hands move past 90 00 , or is there a simpler explanation?
Whoever we got in the play-offs yesterday, McCarthy must urgently address the question of his team s attitude to away matches. If Ireland s away results in Group Eight (0-1, 0-1, 3-2, 1-1) were not exactly disgraceful, the performances themselves could be charitably described as astonishingly craven.
Ireland were under the cosh for the entirety of their away matches against Yugoslavia and Croatia, and large stretches of the fixtures in Valletta and Skopje were not exactly easy on the eye either. Considering that the finals of the 2002 European Championship will not be played at Lansdowne Road, this is not a good omen.
It could be argued that, by throwing everybody behind the ball in Zagreb and restricting Croatia to just one goal, McCarthy actually got it right. After all, we progressed to the play-offs on the basis of a better head-to-head record against the Croats (2-0, 0-1), so his defensive strategy proved central to knocking them out.
But, while that argument sounds persuasive in the circumstances of a 90-minute Croatian siege, it holds little water when we are dealing with opposition as modest as Macedonia and Malta. If we can t finish off a team as bad as the Macedonians evidently are, then our proposed participation in the Euro 2000 finals looks like providing rather more fertile ground for the Apres Match satirists than it does for the half-time pundits.
Yet, perversely, after all Ireland s failures and fuck-ups in this group Staunton s indecision in Belgrade, the lapsed concentration of Cunningham in Zagreb, the entire second half of the Malta game, and last Saturday night they still have at least an even-money chance in the play-offs. (Unless they drew Ukraine yesterday, in which case disregard the previous 13 words.) Due to deadlines, I m writing this on Sunday. Obviously I don t know who Ireland drew, so I ll speculate.
Apart from the Ukrainians and Turkey, there is little to fear. Scotland, whose forwards can barely hit the proverbial cow s arse with a banjo? Denmark, who managed to lose at home to Wales a while ago? Slovenia? Israel? Could this be as easy as it looks?
It could certainly have been worse. Look at poor Russia, dumped from group winners to third place in the time it takes a young goalkeeper to ruin his whole career with one wet-gloved fumble. Look at Turkey, heroic achievers of a superb goalless draw in Munich, but cruelly deprived of the automatic second-placer slot by a third goal for Portugal against Hungary in Lisbon.
And look at once-proud England, reduced to running ridiculous features with headlines like 100 things we love about Sweden in their national newspapers.
Make that 102, lads.
Personally, given their recent dire form I wouldn t turn up my nose at the prospect of a Wembley-and-Lansdowne double-header, but then no doubt the Englishers will be hoping for us, too. That is the nature of things. Now, let madness prevail. n