The most talented boy not in green

THE ODDS are that we will see Stephen Ireland in a pair of Superman underpants again before we see him back in the green shirt.

Ireland, you’ll recall, received an FA warning last season after dropping his shorts to reveal the superhero underwear in celebration of a goal against Sunderland. Earlier this season the Manchester City midfielder revealed that he’d donated the originals to charity but had replaced them with “even better ones”. And he went on: “If I do it again I’ll probably get into trouble but if I score on a really big occasion I don’t think anything will hold me back.”

A warning then to viewers of a nervous disposition: Ireland has already scored eight goals this season, four of them coming in his last three appearances. And tomorrow, Manchester City host Manchester United at Eastlands in a game which, I think we can all agree, qualifies as “a really big occasion.”

To judge by comments he made as recently as last week, Ireland is in no hurry to rectify the international situation. Arguing that he was getting a very bad press in Ireland and revealing that he continued to receive hate mail at City’s training ground, Ireland told an interviewer that he felt it was time to get some things off his chest.

And so the Cobh man spoke again about the now infamous circumstances under which he withdrew from the Ireland squad after scoring against Slovakia in Bratislava in September of 2007 — the last time he played for his country.

Given the painful personal issue at the centre of the controversy — his girlfriend had suffered a miscarriage — this reporter has no wish to forensically dissect the details of his latest account of the ‘Grannygate’ saga, other than to note it doesn’t quite chime with his own explanation when he was originally forced to come clean at the time. And when he protests now that “they’d dug a big hole for me” — meaning who? The media? The FAI? — it’s as if he is still trying to shift some of the responsibility for a situation which, at least in terms of how he handled the initial crisis, was substantially of his own making.

What matters now, if only from a football point of view, is that the fall-out continues to shadow Stephen Ireland, further complicating his relationship with his homeland and leaving him apparently happy enough to devote his professional time to club rather than country.

AND that’s bad news for a national squad which simply can’t afford to have the best quality available to it left on the shelf. And let there be no doubt that Stephen Ireland is the real deal. With four goals under his belt in that doomed Euro campaign, his value to the national side was already well established before he made his excuses and left. But this season, having used the summer break to train hard, the player has progressed to such an extent that he is now probably the most valuable asset at Eastlands, a home grown star who can outshine even the £35m man Robinho.

Form the outset, Giovanni Trapattoni made it clear that he wanted Ireland back in the fold but, thus far, every approach has been rebuffed. In light of the manager’s cold-shouldering of Andy Reid, the suspicion has more recently grown that, if Ireland did suddenly make himself available, it would actually be a headache for Trapattoni. The argument runs that, since Trap favours a couple of defensively-minded central midfielders, there would be no welcome mat there for Ireland. Instead, the theory goes, for the player to be accommodated, he would have to played in the ‘Totti’ role off the leading striker, meaning that either Robbie Keane or Kevin Doyle would have to make way.

But that would make no sense at all. The Irish team isn’t exactly coming down with quality players, in which category you have to include Keane, Doyle, Duff, Given and Dunne, so losing one to make way for another would simply be foolish.

Instead, what would be required would be for Trapattoni to adjust his beloved “schema”, tweaking the double-screen in the middle to make way for a player who, on his own website, describes himself, accurately, as an “attacking midfielder”. That may not be what the gaffer ordered but unless the Italian is neurotically wedded to his system, he’s surely long enough in the game to recognise that an in-form Stephen Ireland could only enhance the Irish team and its chances of going to the World Cup finals in 2010.

Ideally, Stephen Ireland will find time over the couple of months before the resumption of the qualifiers in February to reflect and reconsider. New year, new resolutions and all that. Of course, there would be media storm in the event that he did return but, like all such storms, it would soon blow over. Ireland can just ask Roy Keane if needs any reassurance on that front.