Martin O’Neill happy to bide time on team selection
With his tongue only partially in cheek, here is what he had to say about the psychological benefits of his much talked about habit of not telling players his Irish team until the final hours before kick off
“The benefits are for me, totally for me,” he dead-panned. “I couldn’t give a monkey’s about the players. They will know the team when I want to tell them, most of them — unless he is three years of age and he wants to know before he has a good night’s sleep with a rattler.”
Continuing in more serious vein, he said: “These are men, you know. When we gather on a Monday night, I don’t go up to their rooms and ask them when they would like to know when the team is being announced. You know what I like to say to them? You’re very lucky to be here. Be ready, whether I tell you on a Thursday or whether I tell you on a Saturday morning or whether I tell you 15 minutes before I’m due to announce the team. Be ready. Be ready for the game.
“There’s no issue for me, absolutely not. It’s not a hard and fast rule either. Generally I’ve done it since I was managing Wycombe Wanderers, but I have told some players beforehand — I mentioned to David Forde three or four days before (the game in Georgia) that he would be playing. And with Robbie Brady, I mentioned to him about two or three days before (the game against Poland), just in casual conversation, ‘If you are picked at left back are you ready to play there?’ ‘Absolutely he said, absolutely.’
“Also, interestingly, when I was a player myself and there were some big games coming up, I sometimes thought I would like to know 48 hours beforehand. And when I found out 48 hours beforehand and then played crap, then I thought I wish I’d known just 10 minutes beforehand. I work on the assumption that the feelings I have, generally, most players would have.
“And I’ve seen this before. At Celtic, one or two players who would surprise you, used to say to me that they would like to know beforehand and then they would come back to the thinking that they would like to know 10 minutes before they went out — they didn’t want to sleep on it overnight. And you’re talking about fairly, fairly decent players.”
This far out from the crunch game with Scotland then, there wasn’t much chance of O’Neill giving the media a heads-up on his likely team selection, though in explaining why he opted for Shay Given ahead of David Forde against Poland, there seemed nothing to suggest the veteran won’t retain his place come June.
“Although David has got plenty of experience, you can’t beat what Shay has had now at his age,” is how the manager put it. As to whether Given might be advised to seek more regular football away from Aston Villa in the summer, O’Neill remarked: “I think that’s a question that you would really need to put to him but in conversations that I’ve had, he feels he has been given a kind of a new lease of life at international level and in cup matches, and almost proven to himself again that he’s capable of doing it at a very, very decent level. That must have given him some food for thought.”
In the course of a conversation about Premier League clubs’ early elimination from the Champions League (again) and their national side’s dismal showing at the World Cup (again), O’Neill reflected on the meaning of it all for an Irish side which, after all, draws its player resources almost exclusively from the English game and which currently lacks the kind of superstar quality available to the best in Europe and the world
“It would have been nice if we’d had a Lewandowski to play in our side,” he observed at one point. “I think we would have had a fairly decent chance. That when all is missing, that there is a possibility of a genius out there turning the game. And if we don’t possess that at this time with Robbie ageing a little bit, we have to try and work other ways.”
In the search for new Irish stars, O’Neill happily admitted he would have no hesitation in trying to sell the green shirt to dual-eligibility players on the basis that they would have a better chance of being fast-tracked to a cap with Ireland than with England. The question was specifically framed in reference to Chelsea’s Patrick Bamford —currently racking up the goals on loan at Middlesbrough — but, not surprisingly, the manager preferred not to discuss named individuals.
“I couldn’t turn around and say to you individually who I’d do it with but in terms of your general point, I absolutely agree with it,” he said. “You could be playing top quality international football before you’d ever set foot playing for someone else — I wouldn’t have a genuine problem with (saying) that.”
For details of this year’s FAI Summer Schools see www.summerschools.ie
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