Imagination could cure many Irish ills
When you properly consider it, it is rather remarkable that the deepest tactical debate this country has experienced since Eamon Dunphy threw a pen during Italia 90 was over whether Giovanni Trapattoni should play three central midfielders instead of two. For the majority of other European countries, that very dispute has become much more nuanced, much more developed.
Even when potential best Irish 11s are discussed — and King himself made a point of looking to theU21s — they are still often set out in fairly general 4-3-3s or 4-4-2s.
There remains something of a slavish devotion to what we know, but isn’t necessarily something that has worked.
To a degree, this is reflective of a lasting and very long-standing lack of imagination in Irish football. Just as no one has yet even started to make the changes to infrastructure that virtually everyone knows need to be undertaken, and just as the search for a new manager has so far thrown up far too many familiar names, there is an inclination to look to what is there and fairly obvious.
This also reflected a deeper point to that already-notorious post-match interview. Although King did seem to misunderstand O’Donoghue’s question about Kevin Doyle and Aiden McGeady, and did appear to respond in an unnecessarily abrasive way, there is a validity to viewing players beyond their most obvious favoured positions. It is arguably more crucial than ever, particularly after Trapattoni’s refusal to countenance any such moves other than placing some of Ireland’s more lumbering forwards — such as Simon Cox or Caleb Folan — on the wing.
The history of football has repeatedly illustrated that, no matter how limited the players, a greater degree of thinking to how they are arranged can greatly accentuate the team’s collective quality.
As goes without saying, it has been the root of every tactical innovation in football.
Such thinking should not just be limited to teams as good as Spain anguishing over whether they should play a double-pivot or single, or if Xavi works best sitting in front of one defensive midfielder or pushed further forward by two. Despite what Jogi Low claimed last week, such nuanced alterations arguably have more pronounced effects the lower down the levels you go.
In some of the more fanciful calls of the last month, for example, Guus Hiddink was put forward as a potential Ireland boss. His entire international reputation with perceived lesser teams such as Korea and Australia was based on tactical flexibility, and almost never playing the same formation.
It was the same with that arch example, Greece in 2004. In every match, Otto Rehhagel almost completely altered the shape of his front six to counter the specific abilities of the opposition. Beyond the back four, only Angelos Charisteas regularly played the same role.
How many Irish players can we say that about? To return to a regular issue, it’s not as if squad members of those Korean, Australian or Greek teams were any more tactically sophisticated than the FAI’s.
Many Irish players have become accustomed to a variety of different roles in the Premier League, which has developed as an undeniably more diverse league with the recent influx of coaches such as Michael Laudrup and Paul Lambert. At Celtic against Barcelona, as King was even asked about before the Germany game, Stokes successfully played as a shuttling defensive No 10. Depending on the individual game, one such single move outside of the norm can have an exaggerated effect.
Of course, tactical variations are not just an elixir in themselves, and there can be a danger of managers trying to be too clever. There was an element of that with Glenn Whelan’s positioning on the right against Germany and even some of the decisions that led to that fractious post-Kazakhstan interview.
The difference is that Irish football in general is crying out for experimentation and innovation — starting at the top.
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