Friendly fire can't dictate what happens next with Ireland job

The FAI must make their decision on a new boss on criteria wider than these two friendlies.

Ireland interim head coach John O'Shea and his players applaud supporters. Pic: David Fitzgerald/Sportsfile

Switzerland, a country so diplomatic it was able to stay neutral as two world wars raged around it, has made for an unlikely bête noir. Then again, this is very much a modern phenomenon as dysfunctional relationships go.

The first time ‘Ireland’ played a senior game after dropping the pretence that was the ‘Irish Free State’ was a 1-0 win against the Swiss at Dalymount Park in 1936, and the Boys in Green had the better of the arrangement through the 20th century.

John Giles, Alan Kelly, Eoin Hand and Jack Charlton all earned wins and contentment against the land of the cantons. That changed this side of the millennium. Ireland hadn’t beaten them in 32 years prior to kick-off here.

The Swiss are, in the main, more vanilla than villain. They’ve qualified for tournaments and missed out on others and never really added much flavour to the run of events either way. That unthreatening façade invariably melts when they face Ireland.

It was a 2-1 loss to Switzerland in a Euro 2004 qualifier at Lansdowne Road that signalled the end for Mick McCarthy first time around. A toothless 0-0 draw with them in a World Cup qualifier three years later brought an end to the Brian Kerr experiment.

Not that we had official word of Kerr's departure after the final whistle.

“I hope he gets the opportunity to carry on,” said Kenny Cunningham then. “Sometimes a change can freshen things up, but sometimes continuity is a good thing as well. Is there a better man out there to do the job? There's not too many. That's out of our hands, but I hope he gets an extension.” 

Cunningham’s claim, one echoed by Irish players this week for John O'Shea, was that the squad was squarely behind Kerr. Others felt that a fatal conservatism had been to blame for a fourth-placed finish in a group they could well have won.

Kerr ultimately had 34 games to make his case and couldn’t do it. John O’Shea, with Kerr alongside him in the dugout here and last Saturday against Belgium, has only had two. The expectation is that this latest encounter with the Swiss will mark an endpoint for him too.

As with Kerr, whose fate was confirmed six days after that Swiss miss, we have nothing to do now but wait and see what the future brings in terms of an Irish manager after a friendly window that highlighted both the promise and the problems with this Irish team.

The largely positive effort against a passive Belgian side had buttressed a bit of a case for O’Shea to stick around longer. It was understandable given the vacuum since Stephen Kenny's exit but it was also something of a knee-jerk reaction after only 90 bloodless minutes.

Steve Staunton’s first game in charge was a fool’s gold of a thing, a 3-0 win against Sweden here in Dublin. Less than six months later and his Irish team lost 4-0 to the Dutch. It was Ireland’s worst home result since 1966.

Point is, this can’t be a case of the FAI being swayed by one or two phoney wars in March. Whatever the background to their choice when they reveal the new man next month, it just has to go deeper than anything we’ve seen here this past four days.

Ireland’s effort against Belgium wasn’t reason enough to give O’Shea the gig for good, regardless of the various player testimonies since and the rising tide of opinion that the old Red Devil we know would be better than some devil we don’t, or doesn’t know us.

The first 37 minutes here only backed up that sense of caution as the home team was swamped in midfield, went 1-0 down to an avoidable goal outside the box and failed to make any sort of dent on the other side of the pitch. Boy, did that all feel familiar.

When Ireland did manage a jab it came mostly from a high press and/or a cross into the box where a centre-back, in this case Andrew Omobamidele, was our chief threat from headers. The end game was a semi-desperate spurt of pressure and the old Lansdowne roar.

Nothing revolutionary in any of that, but it doesn’t mean O’Shea isn’t the man either.

None of this is Switzerland’s concern. They’ll move on to the European Championships in Germany this summer and a tournament that will likely end with a tame round of 16 exit. Ireland can only dream of that.