O’Shea’s game plan is a blueprint for progress
BELGIAN players formed the obligatory defence team and besieged the referee, but John O’Shea was already thinking of what came next.
After the ball left Dara O’Shea’s boot and slapped off the face of Arthur Vermeeren before bouncing onto his arm, Rohit Saggi, the Norwegian match official, signalled decisively towards the penalty spot.
O’Shea, elegant in a navy suit, turned on his heel and applauded.
And when Evan Ferguson was undone by a poor shot that maybe betrayed the brittle confidence of a prodigious talent enduring the first blip in his senior career, O’Shea was already pointing and ordering, anticipating what came next.
He stood in the Irish technical area as a 42-year-old greenhorn, a man with a handful of coaching jobs of no significant duration behind him.
But there was the compensation of his vast, glittering playing career, and the wisdom salted away in almost 400 matches under Alex Ferguson that brought five Premier Leagues, a Champions League and an assortment of the English game’s other honours.
There was also the understanding he might have picked up in winning 118 caps for his country.
The manner in which Ireland acquitted themselves against opponents who were much better and dominated the play, even with a team shorn of its brightest names, revealed the O’Shea plan, one that his players fully absorbed.
The hosts were defensively sound, taking no unnecessary risks in possession but looking to move the ball into attacking situations when they could.
They played out from the back if the opportunity was there, but Caoimhin Kelleher and his defenders had no qualms about putting their boot through the ball if that was required.
It all sounds so simple, and it’s qualified by the fact this was a friendly, but this was also a glimpse of a game in which the modest can compete against the mighty with a plan rooted in realism.
That Irish malfunctions were more evident in attack than defence reflected their growing presence in the game, but also the absolute necessity of an underdog taking good chances that come their way, like that penalty.
There may be no more than 72 hours left in this iteration of O’Shea’s Irish career, but this was a competent outing, befitting the manager, his staff, and the willingness of his players.
It was also worthy of a figure who honoured the Irish jersey to an extent and for a time that few can match, and this effort should only enhance the legend of a dignified man.
Dignity is not a word readily associated with the workings of the FAI in its upper echelons.
The nature of the indignities may have softened since the John Delaney era crumbled and its tawdry secrets spilled out into the world, but the business of the CEO, his joshing email and the Oireachtas committee brought dread echoes of another age.
The quest for a new manager — search no longer cuts it as a noun; this has assumed the dimensions of an epic, perhaps Tolkienesque, perhaps Pythonesque — could yet produce an outcome that helps signal another fresh break with the past.
The very nature of the likely appointment, though, given Ireland’s standing, the wages reportedly on offer, and the admittedly little that has emerged as rumour, means fireworks are unlikely.
Whether it’s a bright unknown sourced in a technical area in Mitteleurope, or an understated veteran of meaningful qualifying campaigns on the continent, progress will not be quick; outcomes will not get cheerier in a hurry.
Up until Mail Sport revealed exclusively that Lee Carsley would not be the next Ireland manager, the O’Shea interregnum was working as a brilliant diversion for FAI executives as they try to complete a permanent appointment. O’Shea is well respected, the involvement of Brian Kerr has played extremely well in the media, but there was nothing to make us believe it amounts to anything meaningful in the longer term.
The real business of this window will get done off the field, if the deadlines suggested by Marc Canham still stand.
The willingness of O’Shea, Kerr et al to be involved for these two games is a credit to their commitment to Ireland, but these friendlies struggled to feel substantial or meaningful.
That’s a pity given the calibre of the temporary staff assembled, which includes Glenn Whelan, unloved for much of a long career that brought 91 caps, and too often a target for sloppy punditry and others looking for easy places to lay the blame.
As had become clear long before Whelan played his last match for Ireland in November 2019, or before O’Shea’s final cap 18 months earlier, the fortunes of the national team are not easily pinned on any one individual.
But one man is expected to make them relevant again.
The next manager will struggle with expectations, albeit diminishing ones, but more fundamentally with a limited pool of quality resources. Yet making the team at least competitive against most opposition isn’t unreasonable.
Stephen Kenny’s failure to do that was exacerbated by his claims that better was coming, and he was hardly helped by a case for his defence presented by advocates who tried to convince the world that results weren’t actually what mattered.
That contention eventually collapsed under the weight of its own silliness, and there were none of those noises from within O’Shea’s first camp.
‘The main point was that we need to go and win football games,’ was how Nathan Collins relayed O’Shea’s thinking.
Again, it sounds beguilingly simple. But then O’Shea played this game at its highest level for an awfully long time. Maybe he just gets it. Maybe he’s worth listening to for more than a fleeting window. Maybe, just maybe.
‘MAYBE O’SHEA IS WORTH LISTENING TO BEYOND THIS WINDOW’