Commentary: Irish lack killer instinct

Moyal illustrated his argument by telling the players the story of Ireland’s concession of an equalizer to Macedonia in Skopje back in October 1999. After Abbas Suan subsequently made a name for himself and earned Israel a crucial point that night, several of the squad described Moyal’s prophesy as “incredible.”
Even 11 days after the event, few results in recent Irish soccer history have been as divisive as this one. Beforehand, a draw was considered a feasible return from Tel Aviv and an excellent platform from which to launch the second half of the qualifying campaign. Afterward, it was judged to have been two points dropped, an indictment of the manager’s conservatism and the product of the players’ lack of ambition on the ball. Whether or not those were points dropped won’t become apparent until the last game has been played, but the other points are very relevant.
Kerr has always been a conservative manager. Thinking logically about it, how could he be another way? An Irish manager was hardly going to beat the likes of Germany and Italy in youths’ internationals, and win the country’s first major trophies along the way, by going four-two-four and preaching total football. He’s spent his career wisely cutting his cloth to suit, but at this juncture, there may well be a legitimate argument that he needs to be more aggressive and creative in certain situations at senior level. A good place to start would be set pieces.
There, the lack of imagination and, from that we can deduce, innovation on the training ground remains a serious problem. As the gap in standards between countries at this level appears to be shrinking, set pieces are increasing in value. In the absence of Ian Harte, Ireland don’t have a free-kick specialist like Italy’s Andrea Pirlo, but they do have a braintrust of coaches that can surely come up with one or two ideas to better capitalize on deadball situations. Given the lack of a creative central midfielder, and Ireland’s historic inability to break down good teams away from home, this would seem an obvious tactic.
Others certainly think so. In the current Premiership, Chelsea have scored nearly three times as many goals from free-kicks and corners as Manchester United, and seven times more than Arsenal. Brazil won the last World Youths’ Cup by scoring headers from corners, and at the recent South American Under-20 championships, very few of their goals came from open play.
“We’ve learned how to win games on set pieces,” said Branco, the former Brazilian international now in charge of the country’s youth teams. “I think it’s perfectly valid. After all, down the years we’ve lost plenty of games and titles that way.”
The players’ lack of ambition on the ball was hardly down to instructions from Kerr, and far more probably an expression of their own natural instincts after going 1-up away from home — What we have we hold, etc. By playing it across and back the field so often, and deliberately taking the pace out of the game, however, they unwittingly helped out the opposition. Before the match, the Israelis were petrified of the speed at which Ireland took on France in Paris and couldn’t believe their luck at the more sedate approach in Tel Aviv.
“One of the signs of Ireland’s arrogance against Israel was the slow pace of its game,” wrote Baruch Shai and Oded Zagouri in Haaretz newspaper. “The Irish tried to wear Israel out by moving the ball around, but it didn’t work. The slow pace of the game played in the home team’s favor and for once, we didn’t see a single Israeli player out of breath and hardly able to move by the match’s end.”
After Switzerland’s highly unimpressive win over Cyprus on Wednesday night, and Israel’s draw with France, the group remains finely balanced. It’s near impossible to predict how many points Ireland will need to finish first or snag a playoff place. Beyond the obvious surmising that victories in the three remaining home matches against Israel, Switzerland and France should be enough, the permutations are mind boggling. What can be deduced with certainty, however, is that the French look seriously vulnerable as Raymond Domenech’s reign descends into further chaos. The only problem for Kerr is that the calls for Monaco’s Didier Deschamps to take over are bound to intensify, and, consequently, Domenech might not even be the manager by the time the French get to Dublin in September.
“Everybody is still scrapping for points, but we’ve got to go about our own business now in the right way,” said Kerr, who returned to Israel to watch them draw with the French. “I still see it going to the last game. This is still the tightest group of all. I got the sense out in Tel Aviv that people felt we were the best side they have played out there, but that means nothing unless we push on from here. Home advantage hasn’t really counted so far in the group, and we have to make the most of it against Israel, France and Switzerland.”
The task facing Ireland will be a lot clearer too following the visit of Israel on the first Saturday in June. It’s been ably demonstrated by now that Avraham Grant’s team are not along for the ride. With their team having filled their national stadium twice within four days, and taken points off countries 50 and 40 places above them in the FIFA rankings, the Israeli press have been crediting Grant’s players with giving the often troubled nation an “enchanting” week. That this isn’t exactly the sort of fulsome praise given to Kerr for getting a draw is itself an indicator of how our own mindset is changing for the better.