Youth Has Its Day

It certainly wasn’t in the same league as the republicanism-fuelled jubilation of Stuttgart ‘88, or the irritating beery bonhomie of Giants Stadium ’94, but the Republic of Ireland’s victory over Germany in the U-18 European Championship final in Cyprus last week was as close to a genuine fanfare of triumph as Irish football gets these days.

On the balance of play, Ireland’s opponents should realistically have won by about four clear goals, and this in itself made the penalty shoot-out win even more enjoyable. The triumph was enhanced by the very manner in which it was achieved, with Germany – efficient, unspectacular, grinding, remorseless Germany – fluffing their first two spot-kicks, and thus falling foul of the very system they have utilised on countless occasions down the years to heap limitless misery on their fellow nations.

Watching Germany miss a penalty, let alone two of the buggers, is like the idea of finding, say, Brian Farrell slumped at his studio desk in RTE with a head full of bad acid, muttering incomprehensibly about the wrongs of The System, or discovering, for example, Des Hanafin leafing through Shaven Ravers and other such mags on the top shelf in a newsagent.

It does not add up. It is nothing short of an optical illusion. It is Not The Done Thing.

The win was accompanied by some of the old familiar trappings of power associated with Jack Charlton’s ancien régime – the crowd at the airport to welcome home the lads, the open-top bus, the blanket press coverage – and all this merely increased the sense of anticipation regarding the future career prospects of Brian Kerr.

To put it bluntly, there is a widespread current of opinion that Kerr should be parachuted in to replace the increasingly beleaguered Mick McCarthy as manager of the Republic.

Let’s take this argument one point at a time. Firstly, unless a footballing miracle of Shelbourne 3 Rangers 0 proportions unfolds, the Republic will not be qualifying for Euro 2000 from a group containing Croatia, Yugoslavia and Macedonia. The team is not going anywhere for the foreseeable future, whether it is commandeered by Mick McCarthy, Brian Kerr, Amby Fogarty or Otto von Bismarck.

Secondly – and this is in no way to denigrate the superb feats of Kerr and his fine team(s) – history has shown us that footballing achievements at youth level are rarely, if ever, mirrored at full senior international level. In 1985, the Republic of Ireland reached the semi-finals of a similar under-age competition staged in Tbilisi in the USSR (with a squad containing a certain Pat Dolan). Not one of those players went on to anything remotely resembling a top-class football career.

Of the new breed, Robbie Keane, for one, looks like settling down to a potentially fruitful existence in the mid-to-upper reaches of English football, but he is the exception which throws the rule into still sharper relief.

The image of seven or eight of the team which defeated Germany lining up against their Teutonic opponents at Lansdowne Road in ten years’ time is a nice one, but it’s for sentimentalists only. We will surely never hear of most of these guys ever again.

Thirdly, to sack McCarthy and put Kerr in charge would be to presuppose that he (Kerr) would automatically exert the same authority and control as he has with his youthful charges thus far. But showing a bunch of fresh-faced teens the ropes at a youth championship is a very different proposition from psyching up eleven hard-bitten pros for a make-or-break World Cup qualifier against Norway or Ukraine.

The anti-McCarthy mob, in their near-perfect ignorance, are merely giving voice to the internal mutterings of the wider football public, who fear the worst should the Yorkshireman be allowed to stay in charge of the team for the next year and a half.

But, even allowing for the understandable euphoria which greeted the victory in Cyprus, it simply doesn’t follow that Ireland is going to become a stronger football nation over the next few years just because we’ve won a couple of youth tournaments. To pick one example out of thin air, Ghana have dominated the under-age championships for years, yet have never made it to a World Cup.

Certainly, McCarthy’s opening two games in the Euro 2000 qualifiers are absolutely crucial to his long-term prospects. Croatia at home and Yugoslavia away are not the kind of fixtures anyone would pick to comfortably ease them into the rigours of a qualifying group, and there is a very real possibility that we could ignominiously lose the first game and get thrashed in the second.

Should that happen, the already loud calls for McCarthy’s head will become deafening, but to change coaches in mid-stream would be suicidal. Kerr is a fine coach and a clever man, but a miracle worker he ain’t.

Again, we are all happy that Ireland at last has some international silverware on the sideboard, but in real terms – and by “real terms” I mean the fortunes of our senior national team – it has as much long-term significance as St Pat’s drawing away to Celtic and then proceeding to lose the second leg.

Still, though . . . penalties . . . against the Germans . . .