We’re talking football, I’m afraid. As I whack this out, no decision has been made yet by the FAI about the future of the Ireland manager, Brian Kerr. But by the time you read hotpress, his fate will almost certainly have been sealed. Comment here about that aspect of what has happened to Irish football over the past three weeks is either premature or superfluous. But there has been a lot to mull over – and plenty of facts, myths and nonsense (but which is which?) to go with it that we need to think about, long and hard.
Over the past few days, Kenny Cunningham, Roy Keane and, most surprisingly, Stephen Carr announced their retirement from international football. Others may follow. There is a real sense that the World Cup campaign took its toll, and in more than a footballing sense. It has all the hallmarks of a watershed moment. The question is – did it have to come to this? The answer is: probably not. So let’s talk about some of the issues involved…
1. Ireland doesn’t have the players now.That’s a myth, certainly as far as this campaign was concerned. Numerous other teams with a lesser pool of individuals playing at a decent level have made the play-offs and some will carry on through to the World Cup. For most of this campaign, we had Shay Given, Roy Keane and Damien Duff – all of whom rank among the best players in their positions in the Premiership and, arguably, in Europe.
2. But we don’t have the strength in depth. In the second rank, there’s another batch of really good pros. Steve Finnan played in most of Liverpool’s matches en route to the Champions’ League victory last year. Richard Dunne was Manchester City’s player of the year. Kevin Kilbane got the same accolade at Everton, who finished fourth in the Premiership. Kenny Cunningham is both the captain of Birmingham City and one of the team’s most consistent performers. While he has had his troubles since the arrival of Martin Jol as Spurs' manager, Robbie Keane is a hugely talented striker – and Ireland’s record goal scorer. John O’Shea has featured in the Manchester United team consistently over the past three years – and you don’t do that if you’re a daw.
3. But why are we still picking Gary Doherty? Doherty is an easy whipping boy – he’s a far better player than he’s given credit for, especially as a centre back. But there are players available to us, who haven’t got a look in recently, who would walk into the Wales or Scotland teams – Alan Quinn and Mark Kennedy among them.
4. Ah, but not all of our top players are getting first team football – that’s the problem! People have short memories. In the Jack Charlton era, Chris Hughton was mostly playing in the reserves at Spurs. Similarly Tony Galvin. Chris Morris, who was laughed out of court as a guy who couldn’t cross a ball, didn’t always get his game for Celtic. Tony Cascarino went through at least three periods of football hell – notably at Celtic, Chelsea and Aston Villa. John Aldridge was often forced to play second fiddle to Ian Rush after the Welshman came back to Liverpool from Juventus. Kevin Moran wasn’t guaranteed his place at United – not by a long shot. In the 1994 World Cup, we used to play Tommy Coyne up front – who only got his game at Celtic half the time, if even that, and ended up joining glamoorous Motherwell. And who had we at the heart of the defence for most of the Charlton era but Mick McCarthy – who wasn’t even remotely rated by the aficionados?
5. But Mick McCarthy had really great players at his disposal. Well, he had Roy Keane during the vintage years – but how often did he play? He had Phil Babb, Jason McAteer and Gary Kelly. He had Keith O’Neill, Colin Healy and Stephen McPhail. And he had Niall Quinn – in truth a great player, but one who was stupidly under-rated and abused by a lot of Irish football fans and on occasion by pundits who should have known better. Everything always looks better with the benefit of rose-tinted glasses.
6. But what about Mark Lawrenson and Liam Brady and Ronnie Whelan? They were players of genuine class. But Lawrenson didn’t even make it to the Euro finals in 1988. Brady was fucked around ignorantly by Charlton. And similarly Ronnie Whelan – another player who could pick out a pass, who was as often as not played out of position by Jack and who in any event was tormented by injuries during the run-up to the World Cup in 1990.
7. So you’re saying that this squad is as good as the ones Jack and Mick had to work with? On the face of it, yes. There are just two caveats. (a) Jack Charlton had a few truly great players at his disposal – Liam Brady, Paul McGrath, David O’Leary, Kevin Moran, Ronnie Whelan and the young Roy Keane. What’s more, between Brady, Whelan, Kevin Sheedy, Ray Houghton and John Sheridan, he had creative players, who could open up defences with a single pass. But he often played them out of position and nullified their potential. Though the squad had real weaknesses, that was a great era in terms of genuinely creative talent. Jack just didn’t know how to capitalise on it. And (b) in both Jack’s era and Mick McCarthy’s, there were great leaders among the Irish players – inspirational figures who knew how to talk their lesser team mates through a game. Packie Bonner, McCarthy as a player, Kevin Moran, Steve Staunton, Liam Brady, Roy Keane, Andy Townsend, John Aldridge and Niall Quinn were all strong individuals with a talent for leadership. Roy Keane aside, that isn’t something that was seen very often during Irreland’s most recent campaign.
8. So you agree that the players just don’t care enough any more – that they don’t have the heart because, really, they’re pampered brats who couldn’t be arsed? I mean, you saw them against Cyprus! I’ve been reading this sort of stuff in the papers, but it’s a load of bollox. There’s no doubt that each and every individual playing for Ireland wanted to play in Germany – some of them desperately so. They wanted badly to be part of the World Cup carnival – even for purely selfish reasons. Is there a better shop window in football? Would Robbie Keane have loved anything more than being able to top the goal-scorers list at the finals? No, the team may have looked as if it was playing without heart – but I suspect that this was a reflection of something deeper. In fact more than one thing, now that I think of it…
9. Well, you’d better elaborate. The first thing is that I have a feeling that’s how they thought they were supposed to play – that the approach was intended to be more measured. The second is that football has changed in a way that infects the international game horribly – and Ireland has become a victim of this over the past few years in particular. And the third is that, in the Irish context, the relationship between the players and the media has also changed in a way that was – and will continue to be – hugely detrimental to the cause of Irish football.
10. So you think the players thought they were supposed to play without passion? No, but I think there was confusion as to what way we were meant to play. Three times during the qualifying group, we threw away the lead in vital games. We would have done the same against Cyprus, if it hadn’t been for an extraordinary performance from Shay Given – in fact they could have beaten us 4-1. Why did it happen? I might be wrong, but it seems to me to reflect an instinct that once you get ahead, the most important thing is to protect your lead. You let the other team have the ball. You start to concentrate on getting men back. You cede the initiative. It happened against Israel in Tel Aviv, even with Roy Keane on the pitch. I suspect it was part of the mindset. It is only a slight exaggeration to say that everyone else in international football learned how to press on the opposition from Jack Charlton’s Ireland. Arrigo Saachi had AC Milan doing it. Porto did it under Jose Mourinho. There were times, under Brian Kerr, when we seemed to have forgotten how – and I suspect that this was because it wasn’t what players were instructed to do.
11. Of course football has changed – but what relevance has that to our predicament? The stakes are so much higher now than was the case in the past. If you’re on 20 or 30 grand a week – or in the case of the top players between 40 and 100 – then clearly it makes a difference if you can eke another season or two out of life in the Premiership. Plus with the size of team squads now, every injury is a potential hammer blow. How much paranoia must Damien Duff endure, with Arjen Robben, Joe Cole and Shaun Wright Philips all competing with him for the wide positions at Chelsea? No wonder the joy seems to have gone out of his play this year. Maybe that explains why such a wonderfully talented footballer was relatively disappointing for his country in recent times.
12. Poor little rich boys, eh! You could say that, though it wouldn’t be fair to the likes of Duff, who has a great heart. On the other hand, the news that Stephen Carr is retiring from international football at the age of 29 is a real sickener. The impression you get is that it really doesn’t mean a whole lot to the modern footballer to play for his country – and that’s certainly true of some of them. But that’s not true of Shay Given. It’s not true of Richie Dunne. It’s not true of Damien Duff. And it’s not true, despite what the press has been saying, of Robbie Keane.
13. So I take it you’re now onto the relationship between the players and the media? The fact is that it’s been a mess throughout this campaign. But it reached its nadir when the Herald ran the story about Robbie Keane doing his karaoke thing in Lillie’s Bordello. In the past, for better or worse, that wouldn’t have been reported. In fact, the press might well have been along for the ride. But because access was so limited, and because certain players were even harder to reach than others, the press began to fill the vacuum. This is not just about players changing, however. It is also about newspapers being considerably less scrupulous in their approach to celebrities and their private lives. There was a lot of bitterness among the Irish players about the story – and understandably so. It may have tipped the balance for the likes of Stephen Carr.
14. Maybe the manager should have stepped in? Problem is he was in no position to. He had his own difficulties with the media – and so the overall mood was one of increasing bitterness, paranoia and recrimination. Piqued at the manager’s reluctance to talk, and about being delivered players who wouldn’t get near the starting line-up for the players’ press conferences, the press turned ugly – and when there was a stinker of a performance against Cyprus they threw caution to the wind and jumped to all sorts of unpleasant and unfair conclusions about the players and in particular about their level of commitment to the cause. That said, this fad for retiring is definitely a case of putting club before country. John Giles played for Ireland till he was 40. Paul McGrath was in his late 30s. Liam Brady was retired by Jack Charlton. Why the fuck not make yourself available and play if you’re picked? It’s one thing for guys at 35, who have given real service and may be on their last legs, but at 29, the bottom line is that it’s about keeping onside with the club manager and putting the meal ticket before the glory of the international game. A depressing thought…
15. But I’m still not convinced that we had the players. There’s no point in deluding ourselves, but we were unlucky in a number of ways in the World Cup. We lost Robbie Keane, who was playing brilliantly, when we were two up against Israel and looked capable of murdering them. Had that not happened, those three points would almost certainly have been ours and we’d be in the play-offs at least. We were unlucky to lose against France in Dublin: had Richard Dunne stepped forward a couple of yards at the vital moment, Henry wouldn’t have got the shot that sank us away. And we were doubly unlucky to lose Roy Keane and Damien Duff for the final game against Switzerland in Dublin. Of course they might not have made the difference – but along with Shay Given they are our best players and we clearly suffered without them.
16. So is there any future at all for us after Roy Keane? Of course there is. There may be a problem in that we lack an obvious play-maker – but Andy Reid has the potential to take on that role. We need a few of the new boys to come through, but Stephen Elliot is looking good, Steven Reid could yet turn into a great player and John O’Shea, Damien Duff and Robbie Keane are all young and have immense talent. And Shay Given is a rock on which we can build. We don’t have huge strength in depth – but there’s plenty of good players on the fringes and a few new ‘anglos’ who look like they might become available. The challenge will be to weld them into a team that knows exactly what it’s doing and goes about it with real organisation, passion and purpose. Whether it’s Brian Kerr or someone else who is managing Ireland into the upcoming European Championship campaign, that is what really matters. Greece won the last European championships. True they flattered to deceive, in that they’ve just failed to qualify in the World Cup – but their victory was a reflection of just how much can be achieved against the odds if the organisation and determination is there. Let it roll! We’ll be back…