Ireland will never be Spain, but we can still ruffle feathers

Even now, a quarter of a century later, Euro ’92 stands as the one that really got away.

An Ireland team managed by Jack Charlton that was at the height of its powers went unbeaten through a group containing England and Poland, only to lose out to the auld enemy for a place in Sweden on goal difference. What might have been, eh?

Similar regrets apply to Paris in 2009 when an Irish team that outplayed France on French soil was deprived of a shot at the World Cup by Thierry Henry’s handball.

How frustrating: Evicted so unfairly just when Giovanni Trapattoni’s Ireland had reached its zenith.

The current side has yet to hit anything even like the relative heights hit by the class of ‘09, let alone ’91, but there is more than a suggestion that Martin O’Neill’s squad is finding its feet at the most opportune time as it looks forward to next year’s get-together on the continent.

O’Neill has fashioned a team that is painfully difficult to beat and he must be given credit for the character that has seen Ireland claim five late goals in the course of this qualifying campaign, including Robbie Brady’s opener in Zenica last Friday evening.

He has done all this without recourse to an especially talented generation of Irish players, but the chief criticism prior to last night was an ongoing inability to construct any meaningful passages of attacking play without recourse to aerial routes.

Put simply, they played awful football.

How would that inability/unwillingness to build possession against the continent’s finest play out next summer when the mercury rises and the premium on maintaining possession is at its highest?

It was a fair question before kick-off. It still is, but less so.

Vicente Del Bosque, Spain’s manager since 2008, gave an interview in the ‘Guardian’ recently in which he pointed out that England no longer have a distinctive style due to the globalisation of the game and the diluting influence of foreign players at all levels of the game across the Irish Sea.

Del Bosque claimed the same was true for most countries, dismissing the theory that his own side’s ‘tika taka’ approach was so different to Germany’s, for example, and yet there is a case for claiming that Ireland remain very much a team with a clear identity and style. If one that has been underused to their detriment.

Manager after manager bigs up the Irish before games by applauding their fighting spirit and warning of the dangers inherent in the long-ball approach. It is a line that never fails to evince a wince and yet it is almost always impossible to argue with it.

Joachim Low made just those observations before the sides met in Gelsenkirchen 13 months ago, when the German manager held his pre-match press conference at a glitzy Mercedes dealership, and he reverted to that type on the back of the famous 1-0 defeat in Dublin last month.

“They had one opportunity to score,” he said after Shane Long latched on to Darren Randolph’s punt to claim the only goal. “We had many, but got punished for squandering them. We avoided 99 of those long balls, but the 100th was just too many.”

Ireland showed flashes of ability on the ball that night, as they had in passages against Poland and Scotland, but the manner in which they went about their business against Bosnia last night suggested that a team of ordinary players can play further above themselves.

One move nine minutes in started with James McCarthy breaking play up and ended with Robbie Brady having a cross diverted for a corner. It swept swiftly from right to left and one end to the other and helped set the tone for a memorable evening.

Ireland will never be Spain, but when they attack at pace and with some skill and intelligence they can ruffle the feathers of continental teams who are rarely confronted with such a combination. Put simply, Ireland can be both pretty and effective.

O’Neill has seven months now to build on an end to a qualifying campaign that saw Ireland come back from the dead, to refine still more of the rough edges from a side that has nothing to lose and needs to play like that in order to thrive.

Here’s hoping.