Poom casts a long shadow
The first thing Giovanni Trapattoni’s squad will see when they run onto the pitch at the Le Coq Arena for their traditional pre-match training session this evening is a giant photo of Estonia’s most famous footballer.
Poom’s face beams out from a giant billboard promoting one of the Baltic States leading banks at a time when big business here wants to embrace football on the back of Estonia’s Euro 2012 progress.
Irish fans will be housed in the stand next to Poom’s nice little earner when they fill the open end of the 14,000 capacity stadium tomorrow night but Mick McCarthy’s former Sunderland keeper will be closer to the action.
Almost 20 years after he played in Estonia’s first ever international match, Poom will be in the dug-out for their historic play-off debut.
As goalkeeping coach these days, the 120-time capped local boy made good will be doing his best to make sure Sergei Pereiko of Wisla Krakow keeps Messrs Keane, Walters and Cox scoreless.
Listening to him speak passionately about the prospects ahead for Pareiko and Estonia tomorrow night however, it is easy to believe Poom would like nothing better than to be up close and personal with the Irish in the first leg of this breakthrough play-off for his country.
“I would love to play on Friday, of course,” said the man who conceded two goals to Ireland home and away in the 2002 World Cup qualifiers.
“It is the game that every Estonian footballer wants to play in and the game that we all want to be a part of. You dream of these big games, these opportunities and challenges but I have another role with the team now.
“My job is to prepare our goalkeepers as best as possible to have a great game against Ireland and not to concede any goals. That’s what I must do now.”
It is only right and fitting that Poom will be in the thick of it when Estonia take to this level of international competition for the first time tomorrow night. His name is intertwined with the country’s brief but growing football story.
“When I played for Estonia in that first game away to Slovenia in 1992, a match like this was only a dream for us,” admitted Poom at his team’s coastal hideaway yesterday in the resort that hosted the yachting events for the Moscow Olympics when Estonia was still a Soviet state.
“We are still such a young state. It is only 20 years since our second independence and this will be as emotional for us as that first game was in Slovenia.”
A recent visit to the Aviva Stadium, when he had dinner and a tour of the facilities with fellow participants on a UEFA goalkeeping coach’s course, Poom will be in familiar surroundings next Tuesday night. His team won’t quite have that luxury in the two legs of their first play-off.
“I know there is great expectation about the Ireland team at the minute, I picked up a sense of that when we played Shamrock Rovers with Flora Tallinn in the summer and when I was on the UEFA course.
“For us, it is more a sense of excitement. Because we have managed to get this far, everyone in Estonia is asking us to go all the way now but I keep telling them that qualification for us would be a real fairytale story.
“We have two games and in a play-off anything can happen but we are up against a really strong international team with a great manager and we must respect that.
“We can hope and dream though. Latvia showed us how to do it as a fledgling nation when they qualified for the 2004 European Championships via the play-offs so why not Estonia?
We must be honest and we must be realistic. Estonia was the draw that everyone wanted for the play-offs and on paper Ireland are the favourites.
“But if Ireland are not at their best and we have a great day and a bit of luck then anything is possible. It would be incredible, it would be the biggest achievement of any team representing Estonia in any sport but it can happen. We must believe that.”
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