The World Is Not Enough

By the time you read this, the roof may have fallen in completely. Or we may have, somehow, managed to outwit the might of the Faroe Islands, leaving us theoretically in a semi-decent position to nail down second spot in our World Cup group, and the ensuing playoff. But right now, I wouldn’t bet on it. Us beating the Faroes, that is.

Have things ever looked quite as grim for Ireland? The short answer is: no. Or at least, not in my lifetime. Foul Play was born in 1974 and is therefore unable to recall the dark old days when the team was picked by an FAI Selection Committee, travelled over to play home games via the Liverpool-Dublin ferry, ate fish-and-chips as the pre-match meal and were frequently humped 6-0.
I am, however, old enough to recall the glorious Eoin Hand years in very vivid detail, having attended most of his home fixtures with my dear auld dad. History has been exceptionally unkind to Mr. Hand, Jack Charlton’s immediate predecessor: his name basically became a synonym for failure, as his regime petered out miserably before his successor went on to conquer the universe (well, sort of).
It is, however, a matter of historical fact that had it not been for a preposterous pile-up of shocking refereeing decisions, Hand would have gone down in history as the man who led Ireland to the promised land (the 1982 World Cup). There were some extraordinary results in there: France, Holland and the old Soviet Union were all beaten in Dublin on Hand’s watch. And this was before the good times really started to roll.
Where am I leading you? Well, in order to better understand where we’ve come from and where we’re heading, it may do no harm to compare the riches available to previous Ireland managers with the slim pickings on offer today.
Quite understandably, a rainforest of newsprint has been devoted in recent days to the inadequacies of the Giovanni Trapattoni regime. I don’t disagree with most of it: there is no excuse for losing 6-1 at home to anyone, even Germany. There was no excuse for labouring quite as painfully in Kazakhstan as we did. There was no excuse for succumbing meekly three times in Poland this summer (albeit to three excellent teams) with some of the most lobotomised long-ball muck witnessed since Wimbledon’s late-’80s heyday.
The list goes on. The failure to communicate his ideas effectively in remotely comprehensible English; the bizarre non-selection and apparent ostracism of players who have plenty to contribute; the senseless deployment of lads who are nominally ‘in favour’, in positions hopelessly unsuited to them (with the result that, say, Simon Cox, a whole-hearted and decent centre-forward, has become a figure of national ridicule by being played on the wing).
There is no escaping the impression that Trap (and his assistant Marco Tardelli) are obstinately, dogmatically disinclined to ever look in the mirror and ask the question all managers should ask themselves reguarly: am I going about this in the right way? Are the match results rewarding or, failing that, acceptable? If not, why not? Am I deploying the resources available in a manner that best maximises our chances of success? His insistence that losing 6-1 was basically no worse than losing 1-0 was merely the latest in a lengthy list of gobsmackingly stupid observations that must surely serve to shatter any remaining faith the players may have had in the manager after this summer’s sequence of grisly bloodbaths.
As you may have gathered, I’m not defending Trap, and would happily see him sling his hook tomorrow morning. But much of the commentary in recent days has been delusional and deeply counter-productive. There is a wider need to face reality: with the players we have at our disposal, this team is going nowhere in the immediate future without an almighty collective effort, whether it is managed by Jose Mourinho, Alex Ferguson or Jesus Christ.
If you don’t believe me, scan Friday night’s line-up. Keiren Westwood, the goalkeeper, is a Sunderland reserve. Stephen Ward, repeatedly the most visibly culpable regular contributor to our 2012 of horrors, plays at Championship level with Wolves and is simply not up to the rigours of international football. Nor is Darren O’Dea, who one suspects has finally found his niche at MLS level with Toronto FC.
This, however, begs the question: who would do better in defence? The names of Marc Wilson, Ciaran Clark and Stephen Kelly have, quite rightly, been mentioned. But we need our heads examined if we think they are likely to make that much of a difference. James McClean aside, by far the most frequently mentioned name in recent months by dissident analysts has been that of Seamus Coleman. He finally started a big game against the Germans on Friday, can be considered culpable for the first goal, and while hardly personally responsible for the scale of the massacre, did not seem capable of doing a great deal to prevent it.
All of which should alert people to the most persistently unhelpful facet of anti-regime commentary: the tendency to fixate on the non-selection of certain players and build them up into Messiahs, the implication being that all we need to do is give them a go and sit back and watch as Ireland slowly but surely overhaul Brazil, Spain and Argentina in the global pecking order.
Perspective must intrude. Yes, Wes Hoolahan and his Norwich pal Anthony Pilkington are entitled to feel insulted by the present regime’s apparent belief that Paul Green brings more to the party in midfield. Shane Long is a consistently productive goalscoring presence in a progressive West Brom side – he too is entitled to feel aggrieved that he remains Trap’s fourth-choice striking option.
But we need to ask ourselves honestly: even if a deeply dedicated new manager assumes charge next week, makes a point of watching his players on club duty on a weekly basis, proceeds to pick his best players in their best positions, makes the right substitutions at the right times, engenders a tangible improvement in team spirit, and consistently varies the tactical approach to best suit the varying demands of every fixture, what are the realistic chances of elevating Ireland to anything more than a mid-ranking outfit that occasionally qualifies for major finals and performs creditably when we get there?
I will admit to having been broadly in favour of the Italian’s reign up until this summer, with some misgivings, which crystallised horribly into stark realities as the Polish misadventure unfolded.
The yardstick then was, as always, match results; and the same applies now. I read a thought-provoking column the other day by a much-respected colleague, which effectively laid responsibility for Ireland’s current predicament at the door of anybody who had failed to call for Trap’s head this time last year when, if you recall, there were two notable developments: Trap’s contract came up for renewal, and we qualified for a major Finals for the first time in ten years.
Certainly in hindsight, it would have been prudent to wait until after the summer before renewing his contract. But in the circumstances, I don’t think the FAI can be excessively pilloried for it. He had lost two out of 24 competitive fixtures, and taken us to a major Finals.
There were nagging doubts at the time, and five games and four defeats later, it is now obvious for all to see that Trap’s approach was creatively bankrupt all along, that we rode our luck to the Euros courtesy of a very gentle qualifying group and an ideal play-off opponent (Estonia), that the obliteration we suffered last Friday night was long overdue (Russia mutilated us limb from limb in two Euro qualifiers that somehow only added up to a 3-2 aggregate ‘win’ over two legs).
But by and large, results against the teams we needed to beat (Slovakia, Macedonia, Armenia and Estonia) were good enough to suffice; and with proper management, Kazakhstan, the Faroes, an atrocious Austria and a very poor Swedish side should be no different. Even if Trap stays on, second place may be achievable. The point is that, at the time, the jury was quite rightly still out on whether his Ireland could punch above its weight against the good teams, the totality of results against Italy, France and Russia having been inconclusive.
We got our answer emphatically in June as Croatia, Spain and Italy gave us three good sound hidings: then, suddenly shorn of our quartet of heavy hitters (Given, Dunne, Duff and Keane), Germany carved us open at will, even after Coleman and James McCarthy had arrived to satisfy the Punters-Are-Always-Right lynch-mob.
It is a horrific shock to lose 6-1, and without doubt Trap has been found horrendously wanting. But it doesn’t immediately follow that any other manager would have got dramatically better results this year.
The old man is 73, and after a glittering career, his graph has been on a sharp downhill incline for at least 15 years. It is now screamingly obvious that the evolution of the game since 1990 has passed him by; that he hasn’t a clue how to equip a middling-to-decent selection of players to compete with, and trouble, leading international powers.
So, Trap Must Go. Everyone is now apparently united on this, apart from the FAI bean-counters who can’t countenance the cost of paying him off and trying to find a replacement of equivalent stature.
But the question that won’t go away is: who else, with the available playing resources, could restore us to the position Irish fans seem to think they deserve? If, at this point, I invoke the name ‘Mick McCarthy’, it isn’t to propose him as successor, it’s to highlight the ridiculous expectation levels that caused a section of Ireland’s support to hound him from office after collecting 24 points from a six-team group that included Holland and Portugal en route to the 2002 World Cup, before drawing 1-1 with Germany and Spain, outplaying both for vast stretches, and eventually succumbing to Spain only on penalties.
For this, he was hunted like a dog and driven from his job. I didn’t subscribe to the Mick-as-Messiah theory then and don’t now, but I defy anyone to contrast his achievements with those of Messrs. Staunton and Trapattoni and tell me he wasn’t doing a decent job. Brian Kerr, too, was deemed a busted flush after a three-year reign which offered plenty of cause for encouragement.
After an exceptionally unwise FAI intervention, Steve Staunton took over and effectively sent us out with no concrete gameplan whatsoever, resulting in shocking spectacles against Cyprus (twice) and San Marino, offering a terrifying glimpse of the depths to which a nation of our limited playing pool can plumb when the talent is less than astutely harnessed.
Trap’s regime was welcome for as long as it seemed to stem this decline; that welcome has now clearly been outstayed. But the underlying trend of gradual, inexorable deterioration in the quality of the players available to us is a bigger problem entirely.
Four words have gnawed away horribly at Irish fans’ minds since this summer: the spectres of ‘Scotland’, ‘Wales’ and ‘Northern Ireland’. Whatever about Wales (and, barring a few fine years, the wee North), the Scots used to be regular guests at major Finals. A far more football-crazed nation than Ireland, with a similar population size, they have fallen off the radar in dramatic fashion over the last 20 years. A succession of managers have tried and failed to stem the tide, effectively shuffling deckchairs on the Titanic: collectively, they have missed out on seven tournaments in a row, all (bar Alex McLeish and Walter Smith) eventually reaching a point where a combination of poor results and public hostility made it untenable for them to continue. But changing the identity of the man in charge has made precisely zero difference. Now, the evidence suggests, we may be about to join them.
Yes, a new manager could certainly revitalise Ireland’s World Cup qualifying campaign: there is a whole year’s worth of football to be played, and a play-off is an eminently realistic target. But there is no Golden Generation about to break through. We have a limited pool of talent, the holes opened up by the departures of Shay Given and Damien Duff will not be easily filled, the declining abilities of Robbie Keane (already starkly apparent) and Richard Dunne (he’s 33) will weaken us further. The names being mentioned as Ireland’s potential saviours (McClean, Coleman, Hoolahan et al) are not possessed of supernatural powers, and if there’s anybody out there who still thinks a last-16 place, whether at the 2002 World Cup or at Euro 2012, ‘simply wasn’t good enough’, then they should consult a psychiatrist pronto.
Two weeks is a long time in football, and with any luck, this time next fortnight we will have a new manager in place and six points on the board. No-one should give up on the cause just yet. But let nobody be in any doubt: the road ahead will be an arduous one, and the task may be overwhelming.