Nice guys finish last – it’s time to get angry

Living in a smallish apartment with as many as five other men is nobody’s idea of heaven on earth, but for the duration of Ireland’s European championships campaign, it’ll do.

You can put up with the long queue for the bathroom in the morning if it means that you get to spend two weeks living across the road from the Republic’s team hotel in one of Poland’s swankiest holiday resorts.

One advantage of the proximity to the hotel is that it is convenient for members of the Irish team to come over and do interviews.

On Wednesday, Marco Tardelli joined us in the kitchen to talk a bit about his role within the Ireland set-up.

As everyone knows, Tardelli’s greatest achievement as a player was winning the World Cup with Italy in 1982. One strange feature of that campaign was that from a very early stage in the tournament, the Italy team refused to speak to any of the press who were there to cover them.

Tardelli was one of the main instigators of that policy, because many journalists had said he was not worth his place in the team.

“They were against us, they were always against us, whenever we won: 1982, 2006, always they were against us,” he recalled.

According to Tardelli, the criticism drew the team together and made them more determined to succeed. His famous celebration upon scoring in the final against West Germany was in part an expression of his sense of vindication, like a more stylish version of Samir Nasri’s gesture to his critics in the French media after his goal on Monday evening against England.

This raised the question of whether we in Ireland are a bit too soft on our team. When the final whistle went at the match on Sunday in Poznan, the noise from the Ireland fans swelled to a deafening intensity as the crowd sang the Fields of Athenry. I imagine a lot of foreigners might have thought it strange; these fans had just watched a disappointing and at times incompetent performance, yet seemed to be celebrating it.

It wasn’t really celebration, of course — in part the Ireland fans were saluting an honest effort from the players, in part they were basking in the glow of their own spiritual generosity, saying: we’re not like those other fans who turn on their team in defeat.

Yet maybe the team would actually benefit if the crowd was less forgiving. The rhetoric from Ireland players is always about how grateful they are to get the support, how appreciative they are of the sacrifices fans make to follow them. And the love that pours down off the stands must lift their hearts.

But is that uncritical hero-worship as inspirational as we like to think it is? Maybe the players’ fear of letting the fans down creates an additional element of anxiety. Sometimes teams play better when they feel a little bit angry and are fighting to prove a point. Spare the rod, spoil the child?

It’s just a thought, but one that the former Germany international Mehmet Scholl would probably agree with. During the week, the Germany striker Mario Gomez responded to criticism from Mehmet Scholl, who claimed on TV that Gomez spent so much time lying around he was in danger of getting bedsores. Gomez pointed out that he’d scored more Champions League goals than anyone except Lionel Messi in the last couple of years, so he couldn’t be that bad a player. Then he emphasised the point with two brilliant goals against Holland. His celebration for the second was a lot more relaxed than Tardelli’s, but you could see he too was almost dizzy with vindication.

Yet far from eating his words, Scholl insists that his criticism was only ever aimed at provoking Gomez to raise his game and fulfil the potential Scholl never doubted he had. In a way, you could say Gomez’s inspired form is all down to him.

When you think about it, abuse and criticism rarely seems to make players play worse. Cristiano Ronaldo has been booed at stadiums all over the world and his performance has seldom faltered. But we saw on Wednesday that there is something that gets under his skin: mockery.

When the Danish fans hit upon the idea of shouting “Messi, Messi, Messi” every time Ronaldo touched the ball, they wound him up to the point of total confusion. He missed two sitters.

Afterwards he childishly lashed out at Messi: “Do you know where he was this time last year? Do you? He was getting knocked out of the Copa America in his own country. I think that’s much worse, don’t you?”

With that little outburst Ronaldo guaranteed that soon nobody will boo him at all. Instead the chant of “Messi!” will follow him to the ends of the earth.