Larry Ryan: Trouble ahead in dangerous areas but at least Richie Sadlier talks a good game

Richie Sadlier at the Virgin Media Dublin International Film Festival Irish Premiere screening of Street Leagues at Cineworld Dublin.Pic Brian McEvoy Photography

We have had to wait for this weekend’s women’s Champions League quarter-finals for Irish interest at the top top level of the game.

Yet there was enough to concern us in the men’s action too. Some of the old food for thought. Particularly in regard to the hereditary condition we have passed through the generations.

Our great national phobia, the underlying anxiety that defines how we go about our business.

I’m talking, of course, about the desperate, crippling fear of being dispossessed in a dangerous area.

If you were to pinpoint one consistent aspect of the distinctive ‘style' we have brought to the arena of international football, it would probably be our resolute aversion to this ‘cardinal sin’.

From this one central dread, all the rest follows naturally, as night after day. The knocking it aimlessly, the ‘fighting balls’, the throwing it down the line, the hoofing, the high regard for ‘the channels’ as a promised land of milk and honey.

Curing us of this affliction must rank high among Stephen Kenny’s priorities. And yet, as Kenny begins work in earnest on Monday with his first senior Ireland squad announcement, evidence piles up before our eyes that we had every reason to be afraid, very afraid.

During RB Leipzig versus PSG, we saw at least two more of these cardinal sins, from Peter Gulacsi and Nordi Mukiele, for which the ultimate penance was offered in Paris goals.

We are seeing it every day of the week now, these much admired teams such as Leipzig, under their acclaimed coaches like Julian Nagelsmann, disgrace themselves in this way that conflicts with everything we believe in.

Just as we are threatening to get involved in this line of work ourselves. Just as we are promising to play constructively and progressively through the lines and give ourselves up to all the other notions that tempt you into a valley of sin.

The funny thing is we had a lot less to worry about in the old days, when nobody had the slightest interest in taking the ball off us. When Johnny Foreigner would have happily allowed us to knock it around among ourselves for a while before gifting it back to them in our own time.

But even when there were no pressing triggers, or at least before they were called pressing triggers, some deep-rooted instinct persuaded us to ‘get rid’, before the matter was taken out of our hands.

I suppose it came down to a certain admiration too for the crack continentals and their crafty ways. A realisation that it mightn’t be wise to try and beat them at their own game, that game being football.

But we appear to be set to give it a go now, at a time when there are post-doctoral theses being written in the art of dispossessing you in a dangerous area.

Possession has never been more of a minefield, with all the gurus out there devising the pressing triggers and setting the traps, and baiting you into the wrong passing lane.

And with mountains of research being done on which players should be targeted in these sophisticated ambushes, would you put it past Johnny Foreigner to have a dedicated category in his database for nations new to this whole business? God knows what plans they will have for men stepping tentatively into dangerous areas for the very first time?

So it mightn’t be plain sailing for Kenny, early doors, but we will have to feel the fear and do it anyway, or all our hopes of a more progressive future will break down at the first hurdle.

At least there was also some consolation in the Champions League, in case things have to get worse before they get better. At least we have been restored to our rightful place at the top of the punditry game, courtesy of Richie Sadlier’s efforts before Leipzig-PSG.

Our football pundits have rarely been afraid to express themselves in dangerous areas. There is no fear of us when it comes to talking a good game. This is the one specialist area where we won't take the moral victory, the one-all win.

It is worth reprising the core of Richie’s tee-up to the semi-final, which opted against the traditional route of encouraging people to watch the game.

“Everyone in Germany is wishing (Leipzig) failure because if this model does well you can think ‘who’s going to follow them?’ It’s basically a marketing strategy for a drinks brand. That’s what this club exists as.

“And PSG, far worse, is they’re run by a regime which faces allegations of anything from torturing journalists to imprisoning gay people, and a host of other human rights abuses.

“So if you approach a game of football and see the result as a vindication or a validation of the behaviour of the owners or of the club, maybe this is not the game for you.” 

I’m not sure we’d have made that big a deal of it ourselves. You almost take it for granted, these beautifully succinct summaries of an unedifying situation.

But the one-minute clip went viral internationally, bringing to mind our proudest footballing moments, when the RTÉ panel was the envy of the world.

We haven’t had much of that for a while, and maybe we’ve been a bit guilty, accordingly, of neglecting Richie and Duffer and the lads.

They looked a strong little and large partnership this week. Duffer the details man showing us how Leipzig’s midfielders magically turned into wing backs. And Richie painting the big picture.

We’ll regard them differently from here on in, the lads, now they’ve showed the world that it will never beat the Irish at our own game.