Photo-finish on the cards
Ireland’s manager will be at Upton Park today to watch those of his charges who are involved in West Ham’s game against Stoke. But the Italian will be just as concerned about those he won’t see in action, all the other members of his squad who have to emerge intact from one more 90-minute challenge before they can begin reporting into Dublin for international duty tomorrow evening.
With Aiden McGeady and Sean St Ledger among those already out of the running, Trapattoni won’t want to lose any more first-choice players with less than a week to go to the big World Cup qualifiers against Sweden and Austria. There may be more promise around the fringes of the current squad than for quite some time but, as ever, our national team isn’t so flush with world-beating talent that it can afford to lose two or three automatic starters without their absence having a measurable impact on overall performance.
If a couple more fall by the wayside, don’t be surprised if Andy Keogh gets an instant recall. Or if not this time, then maybe the next time. On the back of what was largely a headline-free squad announcement, the Millwall striker managed to whip up a minor media storm with a tweet saying how gutted he was at losing out and then, in the form of an injudicious hashtag, accusing the manager of showing no loyalty.
Certainly, nobody could accuse Keogh of lacking loyalty to the Irish cause – the scorer of the first goal of the Trapattoni era against Serbia five years ago, and more or less a fixture about the place ever since, he was even prepared to travel to New York for the game against Spain at the very end of last season, despite the trip overlapping with his wedding schedule.
The problem is that Keogh is very much mistaken if he concludes that a willingness to show up should automatically equate to a permanent place in the squad. And while it would indeed be nice, as the Dubliner suggested, if Trapattoni personally phoned his regular picks to explain his selection decisions, all concerned should know by now this is simply not the Italians’ habit. And that’s before we even consider the alarming possibility that if Trap decided to opt for the personal touch, there would be a real danger that by the time he’d finished explaining to someone the reason he wasn’t in the squad, the player on the other end would be hanging up in the certain knowledge that he is about to be named captain.
However, the bad news is also the good news for Andy Keogh. Precisely because it’s always professional, never personal with Trapattoni, the arch-pragmatist wouldn’t hesitate to recall the striker if he felt he really needed him, sour tweets or not. James McClean’s continued presence in the squad, despite his ridiculously provocative twitter outburst in Kazakhstan this time last year, is all the proof you need on that front.
Meanwhile, the consensus going into the Sweden and Austria games is that four points is the minimum requirement if the Irish are to keep up their hopes of securing a play-off place.
But, while that may well turn out to be the case, recent history ought to remind us that, in a tight group, scholarly prognosis doesn’t always conform to weird reality. Consider the equivalent games this time two years ago when it was also widely accepted that a minimum of four points was required by Ireland in their back-to-back European Championship qualifiers at home to Slovakia and away to Russia.
As it turned out, the Irish only managed a meagre two yet still went on to take their place at the finals of Euro 2012. The reason was that, having shipped an apparent body blow in being held 0-0 by the Slovaks in Dublin, four nights later – and thanks in no small measure to one for the ages from Richard Dunne — they managed to extract an unlikely point in another scoreless draw in Moscow. But the real game-changer was the fact that, on the same night, Armenia unexpectedly ran riot against Slovakia, effectively reopening the road to second place for Trapattoni’s men.
All of which is by way of saying that there is a lot of football still to be played in World Cup Group C which doesn’t involve – but could still materially affect – Ireland. Austria will be in Munich on Friday night, for example, and Sweden will be in Kazakhstan on Tuesday, two games in which Ireland’s rivals could well drop points.
And before the campaign is over, Austria have to travel to Sweden and the latter have to host the Germans (not forgetting, of course, that in their penultimate game, Ireland will face what should be their toughest test of the entire campaign – away to Germany).
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves here. It’s Sweden up first at the Aviva next Friday, a game which, on the basis of their previous meeting in Stockholm, I feel the Irish are entitled to believe they can win.
Which, frankly, is about as far as I’m prepared to stick my head out right now, as a three-horse race hurtles towards a home straight which could still harbour hidden twists and turns. Just don’t be surprised if, for good or ill, it all comes down to a photo-finish in the end.
