IT’S CAPITAL PUNISHMENT
TRAWLING through DVDs of Capital League Cup t i es might seem beneath a football blue-blood like Giovanni Trapattoni but England’s muchmaligned tournament is open for business tonight f or the majority of the Republic of Ireland squad.
While the seven Premier League clubs involved i n UEFA competitions are excused glamour trips to Crawley and Carlisle, the bulk of the 23-Irish strong squad for the World Cup tie next week against Kazakhstan are not, and may be up on duty.
MLS-based Robbie Keane and Darren O’Dea, along with Aiden McGeady (Spartak Moscow) and Darron Randolph (Motherwell) don’t play in the Capital Cup, while David Forde and Andy Keogh have already lost out with Millwall.
But even with Sean St Ledger injured, up to 16 Astana-bound players could feature this week in the early stages of a competition far removed from Friday’s glitzy Champions League and Europa League group stages draw.
There, Borussia Dortmund, Bayern Munich and Schalke, whose players backbone the ‘Mannschaft’, and Swedish stars such as Zlatan Ibrahimovic (PSG), Johan Elmander (Galatasaray) and, almost certainly, Celtic’s Mikael Lustig, will await their Champions League fate.
It’s a pointer to a potentially rocky road to Rio for the Republic of Ireland and a telling indictment of the times that not one member of the squad is employed by any of the Premier League clubs which filled the UEFA slots last season — Manchester City, Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal, Spurs, Liverpool or Newcastle United.
Instead, the highest-placed Irish players in the Premier League were Darron Gibson and Seamus Coleman at eighth-placed Everton. For their Everton endeavours, Gibson, who was brought to Euro 2012 by Trapattoni but didn’t play and Coleman, who was left behind, have a home tie in the Capital Cup against Leyton Orient to look forward to tomorrow.
While a number of Irish players will probably be spared Capital Cup punishment tonight, others such as Stephen Kelly and Keiren Westwood, who are both likely to start in Astana on Friday week, need a game, even if Westwood is not likely to be over-worked by Morecambe.
It wasn’t always like this. There was a time, not long ago, when Irish players bulwarked clubs at the top end of English football, bagging championship medals and cup medals by the tractor load, and enjoying Euro club combat.
In the 1994 World Cup finals, Ireland’s squad contained four players employed by the top three Premier League clubs; Roy Keane and Denis Irwin were at champions Manchester United, Kevin Moran was at Blackburn and Eddie McGoldrick at Arsenal.
In addition, five others qualified for Europe that season through the FA Cup or League Cup finals, Tony Cascarino (Chelsea), and the Aston Villa quartet of Paul McGrath, Andy Townsend, Steve Staunton and Ray Houghton.
Had the current amnesty afforded to the Euro- i nvolved Premier League clubs been applied 18 years ago, Ireland would have had nine pl ayers s pared t hi s week’s excursions in the League Cup.
A study of the 2002 World Cup squad showed a slight shift downward in the involvement of Irish internationals at the business end of the Premier League and cup competitions.
Keane was still going strong at Manchester United (third), Shay Given and Andy O’Brien were at Newcastle (fourth), Damien Duff won the League Cup (Blackburn) while Ian Harte, Robbie Keane and Gary Kelly qualified for the UEFA Cup with fifth- placed Leeds United.
Ten years on, not one Irish player finished last season in England higher than eighth or with a major cup bauble, although Joe Mason and Anthony Gerrard, neither of whom have figure d under Trapattoni, were runners-up in the League Cup with Cardiff City.
With more players breaking into Premier League squads from the fertile breeding grounds of Eastern Europe, South America, Africa, and Asia, the squeeze will be felt by those l ads who make the shortest trip from home.
In 10 years’ time, the worry is that there will be more Irish players appearing in the first round of the Capital Cup, or whatever it is called then, rather than the second round like this week.
Playing for increasingly unfashionable clubs in the opening skirmishes of an unfashionable cup competition, going forward, is bound to have a negative impact on the standing of the Ireland side.
Worryingly, the good times such as they were in the finals of Euro 2012, may become a thing of the past.