Enda McEvoy: Seldom has failure been so glorious
The Brazilian team line up for photographers before their Football World Cup second round match against Poland in Guadalajara, Mexico in this June 1986. File photo
Ireland didn’t make it to Spain for the 1982 World Cup finals, a byzantine story of bad luck and bent officials that’s worthy of a book in itself, but my cousin Liam Ryan did. Well, why not?
There were six of them in it. They were young, they were civil servants in Dublin and they were always listening to the young ones in the office rhapsodising about the delights of package trips to Torremolinos. A lightbulb duly popped.
