Should Mick stay or should he go?

By the time you read this, Ireland will have crossed swords with Germany in the World Cup. The result of that match is likely to determine the standing in which the vast majority of Irish people will hold the Irish manager, Mick McCarthy, for the foreseeable future.

If we win and effectively guarantee our passage to the final sixteen of the tournament, he will be a hero – or a hero of sorts at least. If we draw, who knows? But if we lose, then he is unlikely to have a place in our collective affections for much longer.

(Of course the results could conceivably fall in our favour, even in the event of losing to Germany, but it is unlikely. If Germany beat us, then they can afford to rest their stars and put out a second string against Cameroon in their final game. A point will be enough for them to top the group and it’s no major problem if they happen to lose. They are unlikely to be busting a gut either way. Draws have been tacitly agreed before in circumstances such as this. Ireland did it against Holland in 1990. Appropriately enough, Mick McCarthy was our captain on the night. And remember, Cameroon have a German manager.)

In the context of not knowing, it is too early to say yet whether or not Mick McCarthy should remain as Ireland manager after the adventure in Japan and Korea. We might just go mad entirely and win the thing and it would clearly be absurd in the extreme to be calling for his head against that kind of backdrop. But unless we get a very good result altogether, the case against is hugely compelling.

As manager of Ireland, Mick McCarthy lost his captain and best player just eight days before the start of the World Cup. There is not doubt that Keane’s legendary temper played a significant part in this. However, McCarthy mishandled the problem from the outset, and ultimately must take final responsibility for the fiasco that ensued. The buck does stop with the manager.

Most people are thoroughly familiar with the main sequence of events as they unfolded in Saipan, the island to which the Irish team had travelled to begin their build-up to the World Cup. There was the pitch-side row with Packie Bonner and Alan Kelly, in the aftermath of which Keane decided that he was quitting. Overnight there were phone calls that convinced him to stay.

Keane did an interview with Tom Humphries for the Irish Times. The published transcript was brought to Mick McCarthy’s attention by a journalist. The manager decided that he would confront Keane with the contents of the interview at a hastily convened team meeting. Rightly or wrongly sensing a set-up, Keane launched a blistering personal attack on McCarthy in front of the squad, at the conclusion of which he stormed off.

McCarthy decided to throw the captain out. He looked for the endorsement of the players. They felt that they had no choice but to back the manager. Within half-an-hour Keane was informed of the decision by McCarthy. The manager immediately called a press conference to let the world know, and asked three of the senior players to sit at the top table with him. The next morning the team were leaving for Japan. They did so without Keane, who was – astonishingly – left to fend entirely for himself. Only Mick Byrne, the team’s man with the magic sponge and a conduit between Keane and McCarthy in the past, called in to say goodbye to the captain.

And that was just the start of it! Frantic negotiations, to which almost everyone in Ireland now feels privy, took place to get Roy Keane back on board. They failed, in the end because neither of the major protagonists could find it in themselves to say sorry. It is as stupidly, balefully simple as that. And so Ireland – the team – was deprived of its driving force and inspiration. And we, the people, were denied the experience of seeing one of the greatest footballers in the world do his stuff on the ultimate stage, at the prime of his career, in the green of Ireland, in what may well be his last World Cup campaign.

What a shame. What a fucking farce.

We all know that relations between Roy Keane and Mick McCarthy have never been good. But in fact the scene for the explosive bust-up was really set in the week before the team’s departure for Saipan. While Keane clearly has questions to answer about his behaviour at different times during the course of what turned into a bizarre, real-life soap opera, in a way they are irrelevant. The crucial questions are for Mick McCarthy, part of whose job it is as manager to ensure that nothing like this happens – and if there is a problem, to solve it in the way that does least damage to the team’s ability to go all the way in the tournament itself. So let’s ask the questions.

1. Everyone seems to be agreed that the manager had been informed in advance, by Roy Keane, that he would not be available for the Niall Quinn testimonial. So why was everyone, including the media, left under the impression that he would be there? I was listening to the radio on the night and his non-show was treated as a major news story. Was there a fear that his absence might have affected ticket sales? Whatever the reason, there really is no excuse. Roy Keane was justifiably angry about what took place and about the way in which it was depicted in the media. Keane would almost certainly have played his full part in Japan, if this had not happened.

2. Who was it that first suggested that Keane had missed the Quinn testimonial match for personal reasons? On what basis was that said? And what part did that bit of apparent indiscretion play in the whole crazy saga? To what extent did it feed the rumours that followed in the tabloids that Roy Keane certainly felt besmirched by? And who was behind all of that anyway?

3. Everyone seems to be agreed that the preparations of the FAI for Saipan were a shambles. Should the players have had to put up with amateurishness of this sort?

4. Everyone seems to be agreed that the pitch was crap and that there was a greater risk of players picking up injuries on it. Why were they being asked to train in adverse conditions on the run-in to the biggest football tournament most of them will ever be involved in?

5. One of Roy Keane’s complaints related to the casual attitude to training in Saipan. Others may have liked the holiday camp aspect of it, but it was clearly not what Keane had expected and he couldn’t stomach it. Was it not the manager’s responsibility to ensure that the captain was on board and understood the point of the exercise, if indeed one had been thought through? Or, with a bit of foresight, if Keane was unlikely to be comfortable with the lads on R ‘n’ R aspect of the jaunt, might the manager not have agreed that he should get some extra treatment at Old Trafford and join the squad in Japan?

6. What the hell was going on with the media and the ongoing access that they were being afforded? From a journalistic perspective, marvellous! But the net effect was that something that could have been confined to the training ground escalated into a media-driven battle in which not one of the protagonists was ever properly in control, even of their own agenda. Was the barbecue with the players a good idea? Why did McCarthy agree to it?

7. Could Mick McCarthy possibly have been unaware of the animosities between particular journalists and players? In particular, can he not have been aware of the fact that his own World Cup diary is being ghosted by the man who organised the booing of Roy Keane at the Iceland match back in 1997? Did he give even a moment’s consideration to the signal that might send to his captain? Did it occur to him that Roy Keane might just imagine, as a result, that Mick McCarthy was in some way complicit in the campaign to organise the booing, or at least approved of it?

8. When the first bust-up happened, why did he so quickly call Colin Healy up, rather than setting about the process of reconciliation that actually did happen on that occasion? For example, he might have called Alex Ferguson or Keane’s agent Michael Kennedy, or in the case of the latter asked Niall Quinn to.

9. Most crucially, and this is the key question – one that will ultimately haunt Mick McCarthy more than any other in this whole, grim saga. Why did he respond to the Irish Times interview by calling a meeting of the players? Why did he not, as he also might have done the previous day but didn’t, take a bit of time out, to think the thing through? Why didn’t he take Roy Keane to one side and say what he had to say to him alone?

The only logical answer, incidentally, is that he was sufficiently insecure about his position that he had to make the big gesture to assert it. In that it is the manager’s responsibility to protect the players from all of the heartache, stress, grief and distractions that followed, there is no question but that it was a very bad call indeed.

10. Again, given that it is the manager’s responsibility to protect the players and to create the conditions which are most conducive to their being in the best possible shape, both physically and mentally for the tournament, why did he put the players in the firing line, not once but twice in the course of the crisis? Why did he ask them to sit alongside him at the press conference? Why did he not accept responsibility, fully and unequivocally, for the decision that had been made? Why did he fuel a situation in which player was being pitted against player, when he should properly have taken the heat himself? Why did he not impose a moratorium on discussion of the subject?

11. And why did he not, as manager, and in the interests of the team – members of which were beavering away in an attempt to get Keane back on side – pick up the telephone himself and put it to Keane that he would be prepared to put their differences to one side till after the World Cup, if Keane would too. (Of course Keane might also have done this – but that is not the point.)

It is easy to argue that all this is said with the benefit of hindsight. But the truth is that management and managers have to make judgements of this kind constantly in the course of running companies, and businesses, as well as football teams. Indeed, there is scarcely any other context in which you could hope to get away with effectively sacking somebody without adequate warnings being given, or due process being followed. In this context, it was, I believe, wrong and unjust to send Keane home, particularly given the extent to which the failings of the FAI (from which the manager cannot be absolved of all responsibility) had contributed to the problems that were at the heart of the immediate dispute between him and McCarthy.

There are other ways in which I believe that Mick McCarthy’s position was untenable. He told the media that the matter was closed – and then proceeded to write about it in his paid for column in the Daily Mail.

And while we’re on the subject of columns, is it judicious of the manager to allow members of the squad to do ghosted columns for any newspaper that’s willing to fork out the stupid money that is sought in circumstances of this kind? Sven Goran Eriksson took the smart precaution of banning the practice – if Mick McCarthy had done the same, we would at least have been spared some of the reflections of the players that contributed in the end to Roy Keane’s fatal sense of isolation. But then McCarthy could hardly have banned the practice if he continued on his own nice little earner.

The bottom line on all of this is that it was a failure in management and – whatever the outcome – Ireland’s World Cup adventure has been horribly tainted as a result. The team showed that they were resilient by performing superbly in the second half in the opening game, against Cameroon. Mick McCarthy clearly deserves credit for the fact that he was able to lift them for the encounter after all of the tribulations.

But, even in relation to that game there are questions about McCarthy’s selection decisions that hark back to the early days when he made a series of blunders in that regard: in this case, why in the name of Allah did he not start Steve Finnan?

The fact that Ireland performed much more purposefully and effectively in the second half may not have been down solely to Finnan’s arrival – but there is no doubt that it was a significant factor. He has been superb in virtually every game he has played for Ireland. There was no logic to leaving him out. And whatever about the feeling that Gary Kelly had played himself into the team in training, there was even less logic to putting an unfit Jason McAteer onto the pitch at all.

I am one of those fools who believed that Ireland had a good chance of getting to the business end of this tournament. If Roy Keane was going to Japan with an attitude that the point of the trip was to go all the way, he was right. If he felt that the attitude in the Irish camp was lackadaisical, or less than fully committed to that vision, he was right too, to kick out the jams.

He may have made a mess of it and said things that would have been far better left unsaid and done things that were rash and unpleasant – but the basic instincts were right.

We may still do well. But, unless we do go all the way, there will be a sense – and rightly so – that with Roy Keane on board we might, we could, we should have gone further.

A final verdict must wait on Ireland’s ultimate fate, but right now, it’s hard to see any way in which Mick McCarthy can stay in the job after the World Cup. But we’ll see. Of course we will.