Realism needed on Irish Soccer
IN ALL FAIRNESS
By the time you read this column, the Republic of Ireland men’s soccer team will have either hit their minimum target for their opening two games in qualifying for the World Cup having beaten Armeniato bring their tally to four points, or they’ll have failed to win in Yerevan and their dream of heading across the Atlantic next summer is all but over.
There is almost a desperation for Ireland to start doing well again, and its understandable considering the doldrums the team has been in from the hay-day between 1988 and 2002 when we qualified for four international tournaments.
In the twenty-three years that have followed, Ireland have qualified for just two, the Euro’s in 2012 & 2016, and since then it has been a drought, and unless there are a marked upturn in fortunes in the coming weeks in the four qualifiers that remain, next years World Cup will go on without us. But for the fact we are part-hosting the Euro’s in 2028 and are all but guaranteed to qualify, you couldn’t confidently predict when the green army can rock up to their next tournament.
Such is the desperation for improvement, there is a shocking lack of realism in a lot of the discussion about the quality of the players we have at our disposal. The development of the game worldwide has seen more countries come to the fore over the last thirty year or so, many of whom have greater playing numbers and as such are passing Ireland out; it’s a numbers game. We are a small fish in a big pond no matter how we slice the cake.
Yes, there is a ferocious passion for the game in the country, the most popular participation sport, ahead of Gaelic Games, and we should always have the ambition to improve, you will never improve if you don’t have some realism of where a team is at any moment in time.
Ireland are a mid to lower ranking European nation in soccer terms, always have been at club level and it is now stretching to international level as we can’t rely on England and Scotland to develop our players to a higher level as we are also competing with players who are being scouted right around the world.
Also, we don’t have as many players playing on some of the best teams in Europe. Evan Ferguson at Roma is probably the highest ranked club player we have. There is a lot of hype as regards Nathan Collins and Jake O’Brien at Brentford and Everton respectively but for whatever reason, when they put on an Ireland shirt, they don’t appear the same players. Maybe that is the pressure of being part of a team that is short of confidence and struggling to win games regularly, and in that scenario, you can freeze and that is probably what happened in the first half of Saturday’s game with Hungary when Ireland were fortunate to be only two goals down at the break.
The second half response was impressive, aided by a brainless red card by a Hungarian player, but what followed after, while exciting to watch, shows where Ireland are where they are. We don’t have a qualify midfield. Plan A was crossing the ball and if that didn’t work, it was to stay going with plan A.
Wales came to the fore in the last decade largely because they had two world class players, Gareth Bale, and crucially Aaron Ramsey in midfield, the latter always demanding the ball and prepared to pass forward. Until such time as we come across a central midfielder of his ilk, maybe crossing the ball should be our gameplan. Jack Charlton’s approach during Ireland’s golden years might have been seen as archaic but it was effective in that, your opponents can’t score if they are pinned into their own half with balls into the corner, where Ireland pressed and created turnovers high up the field.
It's not the modern way but without a creative midfield up to standard, you have to cut your cloth to suit your measure and bypassing the midfield in terms of getting the ball to Ferguson, Parrott etc…might not be a bad option. We got two goals with that approach against Hungary, and left a couple more behind with poor heading in decent positions.
There is a lot of good work going on from grassroots level to develop players of all styles and at some stage we’ll hit upon a midfielder who can dominate a game, as Roy Keane did for us in his pomp, and Liam Brady and John Giles before him.