Disappointment, not Disgrace (July 2012)

Disappointment, but not disgrace, for a team who merely punched their weight

Before Euro 2012, most objective observers would have agreed that anything exceeding one point would have represented over-achievement for the Irish team; a team ranked sixteenth out of sixteen competing nations, a team sorely lacking in top-quality performers. In the 2011/2 season, no Irish players featured in the group stages of the UEFA Champions League. Ireland’s squad contained five players from the second tier in England, as well as a further four on the books of relegated teams from the EPL. The only medal won by an Irish player in the 2011/2 season was by Robbie Keane – for his contribution to LA Galaxy’s MLS win.

It was generally perceived that Ireland’s foremost players were some way past their best, with the remainder of the squad having something of a journeyman look. Duff, O’Shea and Keane had played for top clubs in their prime, but were in the process of winding their careers down with less-fashionable sides. The likes of Given, Dunne, McGeady and Doyle were quite highly-rated at times in their club careers, but not highly enough to convince an established Champions League side to acquire their services, despite all being linked with big moves at various times. Gibson, McClean and Long were emerging as decent EPL players, but hardly outstanding prospects on a European level.

The remainder of the squad was comprised of journeymen – embodied by the likes of Keith Andrews, who had spent almost his entire career in the English lower leagues before securing an unlikely move from MK Dons to then-EPL side Blackburn at the age of 28. As a youth at second-tier Wolves, Andrews had looked on from the wilderness as the successful Irish U-18 and U-20 sides of 1997/8 competed for trophies, and the Dubliner was restricted to a handful of U-21 caps by competition from highly-rated young prospects such as Barry and Alan Quinn, Stephen McPhail, Liam Miller, and Colin Healy, who would all fall by the wayside at the top level. Andrew’s abrupt, highly fortunate rise saw him overtake Ireland’s underachieving ‘Golden Generation’ of young midfielders to take his place as a regular in Trapattoni’s midfield – a fact that reflects more on unfulfilled potential elsewhere rather than the hard-working, gritty merits of Andrews and his oft-maligned midfield cohort Glenn Whelan. There were very few ‘boy wonders’ available to Ireland in 2012 – mostly players who had to forge their careers the hard way in the English game, like Andrews and Whelan.

On paper, Ireland did not have the requisite talent to trouble seasoned top-level European nations, but expectations were heightened by a history of over-achievement and good fortune at big tournaments – particularly in 2002, when an Irish team drawn mainly from the mid-to-low reaches of the EPL had taken Spain to penalties after battling through the group stage and a tough qualifying campaign, eliminating Holland en route. Historic wins against England and Italy during the ‘Charlton Years’ also contributed to the Irish footballing zeitgeist, and Trapattoni’s squad were expected – perhaps unfairly – to deliver another scalp against Spanish, Croatian and Italian opposition – the latter two teams being regarded in some quarters as fragile and possibly over-rated.

Unfortunately for Ireland, the opposition played to their considerable potential, and although we could point to basic individual mistakes from otherwise-dependable players, flawed tactics and so forth, we have to be honest with ourselves. We have a collection of good professionals, who operate at a high enough level to grind out results against the awkward, ‘banana-skin’ sides which compete in the majority of our qualification games. We have the ability to get results against the sides immediately around us in the UEFA seedings, and should expect to be in contention to qualify from most groups drawn from the UEFA zone. However, at the highest level, we need our best players to be at the top of our game, along with a healthy slice of luck, to get results.

The manager will always carry the can for underachievement and poor results. However, on the results alone, any objective analysis in the bigger picture would show Trapattoni’s tenure in a positive light. Ireland were seeded third for the last two qualification groups, yet finished second each time. They have lost only two qualification games out of twenty-four, and recently underwent a thirteen-game unbeaten run. Ireland have lost five competitive games under Trapattoni – against France, Russia, Croatia, Spain and Italy. Ireland did not go into any of those games as favourites – certainly not among neutral observers.

In the last twenty years, Ireland have thrown away qualification for four different tournaments under three different managers, simply because of dropped points against Liechtenstein, Northern Ireland, Lithuania, Iceland, Macedonia and Israel. Trapattoni has avoided such eventualities, and made sure that we have punched our weight. Surely the improvement in results would be seen as a commendable achievement? There is only so far a team of limited ability can go, after all, and Ireland’s pool of players is currently average at best. Ireland’s record at Euro 2012 was disappointing for those of us who had hoped beyond hope that we could pull off a shock. It was not an embarrassment, nor a disgrace, and that is why the Irish fans did not boo the team off, unlike that dark Croke Park night in November 2007, when Cyprus came within two minutes of claiming their greatest ever away victory. Like against Italy in 1990 and Holland in ‘94 and ‘95, we were simply beaten by better teams, with better players and greater traditions in the game. No shame in that. And if the lessons from the tournament can be embraced and learned from, then all the better for the future.