I Can t Believe It s Paul Butler

Any footballer who has to be replaced at short notice by Phil Babb to save himself from further on-field embarrassment might be excused for swiftly running through his mental list of alternative career options.
He may not have gone that far, but we can only speculate at what mournful thoughts were running through Paul Butler s head as he sat in the Lansdowne Road dressing-room last week, having been subbed at half-time after receiving a frightful chasing from the monster Jan Koller.
In truth, the presence of Butler in Ireland s line-up was always likely to create problems for all concerned.
Those journos who are already hostile to McCarthy have now seized upon Butler s non-Irishness as a stick to beat the manager with. One hack even got into a verbal altercation with McCarthy over the topic, at a press conference to announce the squad a fortnight ago.
If I know that hack, he will have spent the first half of the Czech game braying the feverish laughter of a vindicated man, and proclaiming the awfulness of Butler in lurid terms to everyone else in the press box. Understandably so, too.
The Butler issue essentially comes down to two strands. Firstly, should someone with no connection whatsoever to this country, save for the nationality of his spouse, be allowed to represent it? Secondly, quite apart from his origins, is Butler good enough as a footballer to warrant selection?
The first part answers itself. Butler is Anglo-Welsh, and doesn t have a drop of Irish blood in him. This is not like Jason McAteer unearthing a great-grandfather from Kinnegad, or wherever it was. This is cut and dried. The guy is not Irish.
It is all rather reminiscent of the faintly sad activities McCarthy engaged in when he first got the Ireland job, traipsing around Britain and attempting to woo journeyman jobsworths like Ashley Ward to get them to declare for the green shirt.
The only other country Butler qualifies for is Wales, and he gave them the brush-off because, and I quote, I want to qualify for World Cups .
Butler would be assured of a regular place with Wales, a distinction he shares with only about half the able-bodied male population of the British Isles. The Irish team, however, has more lofty aspirations than their Cymric counterparts these days, and thus should theoretically be in more of a position to say no to foreign interlopers who come looking for a game.
But he s there now, and given McCarthy s innate stubbornness and his idiotic liking for getting up the media s noses, we are likely to be looking at the guy for the next few matches, at the very least.
Now, the footballing part of the issue. Butler is your average honest pro, a big man with broad shoulders (and bad sideburns) who has played alongside Steve Bould all season in the centre of Sunderland s defence.
He got ripped apart by our friend Koller, of course, but if we want to be charitable, we can put maybe half of his inadequacy down to first-night nerves.
It must be said, too, that Koller will roast better players than Butler in the future. Rivaldo he ain t, but the Czechs don t view him as their not-so-secret Euro 2000 weapon for nothing.
With Gary Breen s place at Coventry now under severe threat from Colin Hendry, and Kenny Cunningham essentially playing out of position whenever he pulls on a green shirt, there may be more room for Butler in the Irish squad (if not the team) than we think.
But no matter how well or awfully he plays, of course we will see more of Butler. A lot more. Mick McCarthy has far more traits in common with Jack Charlton, both as a man and as a manager, that he would like to admit and this annoying habit of apparently picking (and dropping) certain players for spite is one of them.
Butler wasn t the only man to endure an interesting introduction to the terrible realities of international football last Wednesday week. A young man by the name of Zoltan Sebescen was given his Germany debut that same night, against Holland in the Amsterdam ArenA (which, Foul Play is reliably informed, is how you spell it).
Like Butler, 45 minutes later he had been subjected to a thorough rogering by Holland s winger Boudewijn Zenden, in the context of an already totally dominant Dutch performance.
All of which left the Jerries no option at half-time but to consign Sebescen s nascent international career to the dustbin of history. Although, for all their current woes, at least they were not forced to resort to Phil Babb as the alternative.
The next day, in the notoriously vituperative German press, Sebescen had the kind of stuff written about him which made the lambastings of Butler resemble veritable eulogies. Even his own manager stuck the boot in.
I must be blamed for the result, said the German boss, Erich Ribbeck, afterwards, because I was the one who picked this fellow.
Now this guy sounds like the man for the Irish job, rather than the hard-headed, dogmatic gnome we are currently lumbered with. Ribbeck may be the cruellest coach in Europe, but that s surely better than being a perennial Flat Earther in a world of slippery slopes.