Mick McCarthy on the Ireland job: ‘Of course I’d do it’
And while he says he’d like to think success in France will ensure O’Neill remains in charge for the long-term, he has reiterated his own desire to have another crack at managing Ireland should the opportunity arise again.
On the much-discussed subject of O’Neill still not having agreed a new deal with the Euros just a few weeks away, McCarthy points out he went into the 2002 World Cup finals as manager of Ireland having agreed but yet to finalise a contract extension with the FAI.
“We got to the last 16 didn’t we?” he says. “We had a pretty good tournament so it didn’t really affect me, not at all. I never gave it a thought. Besides, if you have a good tournament, everyone is delighted and thinks all good things about you. If you have a bad tournament, you can still get the sack. If you are under contract, you can walk away, resign - which ultimately I did anyway. There are lots of ways out of contracts. I don’t see what the issue is.
“And I don’t think it has a bearing on players. Players are pretty single-minded and selfish about it. They just want to go and play well for themselves. It’s ‘the King is dead, long live the King’. We’ve seen that before, haven’t we? A good manager disappears. And the players? They just carry on. They have to play for the country but to play for themselves as much as anything.
”Martin has continued to get the best out of them anyway. It’s up to Martin to decide. I can’t imagine it will affect him or his performance. Not at all. I reckon we should be going in with a positive mood having qualified, no matter what the contract situation is. We’ve qualified, let’s see how we do against some of the best nations in the world and then resolve other matters afterwards. Because all those matters can be resolved afterwards, whether the results are good, bad or indifferent.”
Asked if he would fancy another go at the job himself, McCarthy’s answer was unequivocal: “If there’s no manager in it and I’m out of work and someone asked me to do it, of course I’d do it.”
But what if circumstances mean the offer comes up in two months’ time?
“In two months’ time I’ll still have two years left on my contract,” the Ipswich boss replied. “In two months’ time, Ireland might have got through to the semi-finals and be having a great tournament. There might be a party in the park and we’re all singing Martin O’Neill’s name and he might want to sign and stay for another four years. So I’d prefer to think that would happen and let’s all be happy about that.
“Let’s look forward and hope it’s a good European Championships and there’s none of this hypothetical nonsense in my point of view.”
His openness to the idea of returning to the Irish role at some point has, he insists, nothing to do with any nagging feeling of work left undone from his previous time in charge of the national team.
“Oh, I’ve got no unfinished business,” he says. “I mean, to be unfinished I’d have to get to the quarter-finals or semi- finals of a World Cup to improve on what I did before, or get to European Championships because I didn’t qualify. That’s the only one regret I have, that we didn’t qualify when we were 1-0 up in Macedonia (in the 1999 game that ended with Ireland conceding an injury-time equaliser). No other regrets at all from my time in the job.”
So would it be the pride the former Ireland captain associates with being Ireland manager which would draw him back for a second time?
“Well let’s ask another hypothetical question,” he says, bristling slightly. “If in two months’ time there isn’t a manager in Ireland, and Pep Guardiola decides because they didn’t finish in the Champions League he’s not going to Manchester City - if I was offered both jobs, which one would I take? So let’s hope both come up, or four or five, and I could have my pick, and we’ll see how much pride is favoured over £5 million a year or whatever, I don’t know.
“So they’re all hypothetical questions, but if you’re asking me was I exceptionally proud to do the job, then I think you know the answer to that. The answer is yes. And was I exceptionally proud to play and captain and manage in a World Cup, then I’d say it’s difficult to replace that. That was wonderful.”
Not least, of course, when Robbie Keane famously gave his gaffer that moment of slow motion, almost disbelieving euphoria by equalising against Germany at the death in Ibaraki in 2002. And 14 years on from Japan and Korea, McCarthy believes that the veteran striker could yet supply some similarly crucial intervention in France.
“He’s amazing,” says McCarthy. “If you want a goal, when people get tired and the game gets stretched, when chances will come because it might be that you’re launching balls into the box and something might drop, you want somebody who has the experience, know-how, and craft to be in the right place at the right time.
“He’s had that ever since I’ve known him, since he was an 18-year-old. We can write people off too quickly. He just keeps rewriting the record books, Robbie. You know he’ll score, you just fancy him. He’ll score.”
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