King: I’m starting with a clean slate
As the search begins for a permanent successor to Giovanni Trapattoni, U21 head coach King’s first task as caretaker boss of the senior team is to compile the panel for those games which he will unveil in Dublin next Monday.
Since the departure of the Italian, Darron Gibson and Anthony Stokes have stated their desire to get themselves back into contention for a place in the squad while even Stephen Ireland has hinted that he might be willing to end his long exile from international duty.
When those names were put to King, he replied: “I need to sit down and put the squad together. I’d have no reason to block anybody out of the squad. As far as I’m concerned I’m starting from a clean slate.
“I’ve my view of what should constitute the squad of 30-odd players that we’ll put on standby and then the 23 that we’ll call up and from there what the starting 11 should be. Through injury and unavailability we may well lose some players but nobody will be excluded by me — why would I exclude anybody?”
King explained how he found out that he had been elevated to the Irish hot-seat on Monday.
“I was out for a jog and when I came back I saw that I had a number of missed calls from various people within the FAI management,” he said.
“The news came as a pleasant surprise. It’s fair to say that anybody who has been involved in management at various levels wants to go ahead in their career.
“When I was coaching schoolboy teams I wanted to keep progressing and I moved from there onto the League of Ireland level. When I worked with ladies international teams I was delighted to get the opportunity to move on then to coach the U21 men’s team. It’s logical that you want to progress through the levels as a manager so it was something I was aware might be a possibility.”
Indicating goalkeeping coach Alan Kelly is remaining in his post, King confirmed that the FAI’s High Performance Director Ruud Dokter will be his assistant for the upcoming games in Cologne and Dublin which will bring Ireland’s World Cup 2014 campaign to a close.
“As things stand, Ruud Dokter will assist me for these games but I haven’t spoken to everybody in the coaching set-up,” King said. “I don’t think there’ll be any changes to the existing current coaching set-up.”
The interim manager is currently in England where last night he watched Fulham host Everton before travelling up to Liverpool to see tonight’s meeting of Tranmere Rovers and Stoke.
Asked if he’d like to be considered for the permanent position of Ireland manager, King replied: “I’m just focusing on the job I was asked to do by the FAI. I’m inspired and delighted by this opportunity — but I’m also a realist.”
Meanwhile, Dokter and Ray Houghton, the men tasked by the FAI to assess applicants and potential candidates for the permanent position, have already begun their work although, in the now unlikely event of the vacancy being filled before next month’s games, it’s understood that King would still remain in charge for the two matches.
The widely-held notion that Martin O’Neill was “nailed-on” for the job has clearly receded in the last few days, not least in light of reports linking him to Fulham and Norwich should vacancies arise in the near future at two clubs which are currently struggling near the foot of the Premier League.
Mick McCarthy remains the most obvious ‘homegrown’ alternative should the tentative O’Neill courtship come to nought but Roy Keane’s chances of moving into international management at this juncture are “remote at best”, according to one source au fait with the issue.
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