McCarthy's second chance to save Sunderland

As a player, Mick McCarthy’s solid and uncomplicated career was perhaps best summed up by his reaction after the Republic of Ireland lost a tight and tense European Championship match with Holland in 1988.

He sought out Dutch star Ruud Gullit, a man whose talents he had more than adequately shackled that day, implored him to swap shirts and later quipped: “When he gets mine home he’ll wonder who the bloody hell’s it is.”

As a manager, however, McCarthy is now seemingly about to get the opportunity to step out of the shadows and into the Stadium of Light as the new manager of Sunderland.

It is a job which he came close to getting in October last year only for the Football Association of Ireland’s demands for hefty compensation to open the door for Howard Wilkinson to step in.

Wilkinson’s swift exit, after just 20 games in charge, has given McCarthy a second chance however, and it looks as though the door through which Wilkinson departed will still be swinging when McCarthy arrives on Wearside.

Although the Republic lost both their opening Euro 2004 qualifiers against Russia and Switzerland since McCarthy led them back from a courageous campaign in the Far East in the summer, there were always going to be job options open to McCarthy.

His record and overall profile with Ireland ensured he was quickly among the front-runners for top managerial vacancies, those at Sunderland and Ipswich just two for which he was in the frame.

Until the last-minute 2-1 defeat by Switzerland at Lansdowne Road in October, McCarthy had not lost a competitive home game for Ireland in his six-year reign - a total of 15 matches.

At the World Cup finals their only defeat came via a penalty shoot-out against Spain, and until the 4-2 defeat to Russia in the Euro 2004 qualifiers, McCarthy’s only away defeats in three years were both by single-goal margins - Davor Suker’s stoppage-time effort for Croatia in September 1999 and Iran’s futile ‘winner’ in the World Cup play-off second leg when Ireland still triumphed on a 2-1 aggregate.

So his record of international wins – or, just as important, avoiding defeat - is hard to criticise. Neither can he be reproached for the way he had built up a squad of solid individual quality virtually from scratch.

In terms of man-management, of course, McCarthy’s critics will point out that Roy Keane has been a problem from day one – but he probably would have been for almost anybody else who could have managed him at international level.

Keane has been spoilt by having worked for top masters like Brian Clough and Sir Alex Ferguson. After that it was always going to be difficult for anybody to gain his respect and it is doubtful whether even Jack Charlton, the man who put Irish football back on the map as well as giving Keane his debut, managed to do that.

When Charlton was pushed out after 10 glorious years having failed to qualify for the finals of Euro 96 in England, former Barnsley, Manchester City and Celtic player McCarthy came in labelled with a ‘Son of Jack’ nickname having been the Geordie’s centre-half and captain for much of that revivalist decade.

Eyebrows were raised at the appointment in February 1996 because McCarthy, a blunt Yorkshireman but just as Irish deep down as his Limerick-born dad Charlie, was struggling then as manager of Millwall where the locals would not have been surprised if he had got the sack at any minute.

Not surprisingly he was delighted to take the Ireland job, even on low wages, but the size of the task soon became apparent when Keane was sent off for thumping a Russian opponent in McCarthy’s opening match at Lansdowne Road where a 2-0 defeat proved only the start of a series of early setbacks.

A string of Euro 96 finalists used Ireland as cannon-fodder in their preparation for the finals and only a 2-2 draw with Croatia provided a respite to interrupt five opening defeats on the McCarthy card.

The last of those was at the start of a summer tournament in America where the hosts beat them 2-1.

By this time, Keane was officially dropped having failed to show up for a home friendly a few months earlier.

Slowly but surely, though, McCarthy started to rebuild Charlton’s ageing squad, giving debuts to bright youngsters like Kenny Cunningham, Ian Harte, Gary Breen and later, Robbie Keane and Damien Duff.

And eventually he made an uneasy truce with Roy Keane, easing the Manchester United dynamo back into the fold and eventually handing him the captaincy after Andy Townsend joined many of Charlton’s other seasoned warriors by retiring from the international scene.

It is well documented how McCarthy’s new breed failed so narrowly and agonisingly to reach the finals of France 98 and Euro 2000, beaten in play-offs on both occasions.

But successive FAI figureheads like former president Pat Quigley and ex-chief executive Bernard O’Byrne could still see the quality and promise of McCarthy’s rebuilding work and resisted considerable public pressure by awarding him further contract extensions and much-improved financial terms.

He proved his worth with four stunning unbeaten performances against Portugal and Holland during the last World Cup qualifying campaign when victory in Dublin against the Dutch practically sealed the trip to Japan and South Korea.

And he had signed another deal, taking him up to June 2004, even before qualification for this summer’s Far East adventure had been clinched.

But then that explosion with Keane in Saipan left a fall-out that McCarthy knows he will never quite be able to recover from – even though he brought the remainder of his squad home as heroes for reaching the second phase.

Once the dust had settled and the cheers subsided there were too many, for McCarthy’s peace of mind and security of tenure, clearly dreaming of ways that the banished but still widely idolised Keane might return.

The time was right for McCarthy’s Irish adventure to come to an end, but whether the time is right for him to return to club management with a club rooted to the foot of the Premiership remains to be seen.

That is if the long-suffering Sunderland fans can bear to watch.