Twenty-one years ago, Jack Charlton used to sit down to pick an Irish team the guts of which were figuring week in week out for Liverpool, Manchester United and Everton, then the best teams in England. Remember the famous occasion at Hampden Park when, even with a glut of injuries, he was able to select a starting XI with Paul McGrath and Ronnie Whelan as the makeshift full-backs? When a manager has the option to be able to slot the best central defender of his generation and one of the best midfielders the country has ever produced into such temporary roles, there is no better measurement of the quality available to him.
Mick McCarthy wasn’t quite as fortunate during his time in charge but he too had some unique talents to call upon. He had the best player in the Premiership and the most feared midfielder in Europe in Roy Keane, the most reliable full back in Denis Irwin, and the most exciting young winger in England in Damien Duff. It helped too that he was often able to pick a side where half the team were regularly playing in the Champions’ League with the likes of Leeds United and Newcastle United.
Brian Kerr and Steve Staunton weren’t so blessed, and against that historical background, Trapattoni getting to watch O’Shea start regularly for Alex Ferguson’s team only during an injury epidemic hardly compares. Perhaps nothing sums up the standing of the current squad better though than the recent transfer window.
Apart from Robbie Keane going from title contending Liverpool to relegation strugglers Tottenham (a club and a manager with serious delusions of grandeur), Kevin Kilbane went to Hull City, Aiden McGeady remained mired at Celtic with a manager who doesn’t care for him so much, and Shay Given made the high-profile leap from St. James’ Park to Manchester City. For somebody who is a legitimate candidate for the title of best keeper in the league over the past decade, the last transfer was not exactly a leap in class.
Newcastle may be a sorry excuse for a club right now and the media patronage of their annoying fan base is truly tiresome but City is an ongoing portrait of chaos. They have about as much chance of winning a serious trophy and/or qualifying the Champions’ League any time soon as Joe Kinnear’s team. Coming towards the end of their first season as the richest club in the world, the jury is still out about whether this City experiment with lavish spending will be about as successful as their early ’80 antics with million pound players.
If that’s an argument for another day, the relevant point about all criticism of Trapattoni is that, paltry as Ireland’s resources may be, he hasn’t shown a willingness to make the most of them either. If the Stephen Ireland case is a unique and unfortunate mess of circumstances that he inherited, the refusal to see any merit in Andy Reid is a perverse course of action. Beyond his physique issues, Reid is a sublime passer of the ball, a gift that should have him cherished instead of exiled by the manager.
Of course, making a very public display of his disdain for the Sunderland midfielder is also uncannily like something that Charlton would have done back in the day. That isn’t the only thing Trapattoni has in common with the most successful of his predecessors in the Irish job either. To this point, the Italian has brought a rather large dollop of good fortune to his task, a substance marked decidedly absent during the Kerr and Staunton years in particular. His supporters may claim he makes his own luck but the problem with that assertion is luck has a tendency to run out eventually. Even the apparently blessed Charlton discovered that much to his cost in the abortive qualifying campaigns for Euros ’92 and ’96.
It’s also funny how the slightest hint of success brings out so much arrogance in some quarters. No sooner had Ireland the country secured the most fortuitous victory over Georgia at Croke Park the other week than Ireland the player was being publicly warned he had to return to the squad before qualification was secured or else he couldn’t go to South Africa for the World Cup.
“Maybe we will take Ireland into consideration but, if we qualify with this squad, he cannot say, ‘I am available’,” said Trapattoni. “That’s not for him, it’s about the fans. He has to show Irishness and a willingness to play for Ireland.”
An extraordinary statement to make before the team has even played one of the four games against Italy and Bulgaria, the two genuinely serious outfits in Group 8. Obviously, Trapattoni is aware one of those teams happens to be the reigning world champions and arguably the most consistent European nation in the history of the game. Taking that and a tricky assignment to come in the by-now bogey location of Cyprus into account, Ireland will do very well to secure second place in the group and a play-off spot.
Getting to South Africa by that circuitous route could entail having to defeat the likes of France, Serbia, Russia, Croatia or Turkey. That would make next November the time in Trapattoni’s reign when luck will play an even bigger role than ever.