The joke isn’t funny anymore
If FAI CEO Jonathan Hill and Director of Football Marc Canham were picking a Taoiseach we’d be lucky to have one by Christmas. Lee Carsley’s declaration of disinterest in the Ireland job confirms the search for Stephen Kenny’s successor as one of the great fiascos in our sporting history. There hasn’t been a wild goose chase like this since the Spanish conquistadors plunged into the Florida Everglades to seek the Fountain of Youth.
Even if a new manager is appointed this week, the good has been knocked out of it. It’s clear a desperate FAI will settle for whoever they can get. Hill and Canham are like the teacher from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off monotoning “anyone ... anyone,” in vain search of an answer.
It’s now four months since Kenny’s departure. We were assured a new boss would be in place for the friendlies in March. That hasn’t happened but the absurdly elongated nature of the process would have been forgiven had the FAI eventually come up with the right man. They clearly felt Carsley was the ideal candidate and didn’t initially consider anyone else. The expectation was that he’d eventually sign up. The question now is whether he was ever interested. His old teammate Shay Given and manager Brian Kerr seemed certain that he wasn’t.
Carsley, like Declan Rice and Jack Grealish, presumably sees little point in opting for Ireland when England might come calling.
Where does that leave us? Apparently with Willy Sagnol and Gus Poyet as leading contenders. Which means next Tuesday’s Uefa Championship play-off between Greece and Georgia may offer the booby prize of becoming Ireland manager for the loser. (The winner will presumably manage his team at the finals.) That would make Sagnol favourite. The drawback is that he isn’t a very good international manager.
Georgia have won just five of the 17 World Cup and European Championship
Shohei Ohtani isn’t just the biggest current star in Major League baseball, he’s the biggest star the sport has seen in years. His ability to make a major impact as both a batter and pitcher makes him a one of a kind modern phenomenon.
His close-season move to the powerful Los Angeles Dodgers from the lowly Los Angeles Angels
qualifying matches they’ve played with the Frenchman in charge. They’ve lost to Kosovo and Norway and 7-1 at home to Spain and only made the play-offs by topping a bottom flight Nations League group.
Sagnol’s results are strikingly
similar to Kenny’s. There’s even a 2-0 home loss to Greece. While Slovakia, Slovenia, Albania and Romania were confounding expectations by automatically qualifying for the Euros, Georgia were stuck in a rut.
Maybe they’ll come through on Tuesday. That’d make Poyet favourite because Greece could sack him and bring his total up to seven dismissals in nine years. He lasted five months with AEK Athens, six with Real Betis and seven with Universidad Catolica in Chile.
Poyet’s reputation improved during the European Championship qualifier group stage, but the only teams Greece actually beat were Gibraltar catapulted the Japanese star into the celebrity stratosphere.
On Wednesday news broke that $4.5m had been transferred from Ohtani’s account to that of a bookie named Matthew Boyer, who’s been the subject of a police investigation. Sports betting remains illegal in California.
Ohtani’s long-time translator Ippei Mizuhara told ESPN the player had merely been paying off Mizuhara’s debts. Ohtani’s connections, who’d initially put Mizuhara in touch with ESPN, then accused the translator of engaging in a “massive theft” against the player.
This is a huge embarrassment for American sport. Since the and Ireland. As Irish manager he won’t have the chance to pad his record with wins against us.
Then there’s John O’Shea. A fine player as yet unqualified to be an international manager. Since getting his Uefa coaching licence less than 18 months ago, the extent of his managerial experience is six months as assistant in the last lame duck days of the Kenny reign and three months coaching at Birmingham City before Wayne Rooney was sacked.
There’s also a stint as assistant to Jim Crawford with the Ireland under 21s. Though surely that means Crawford should be ahead in the queue. Perhaps the FAI hope O’Shea’s performance in this international window will propel him into the job on a brief surge of public goodwill. Such a transparently cynical manoeuvre would be par for the course.
O’Shea’s old teammate Damien Duff has at least, unlike another contender Anthony Barry, managed a team. But
Supreme Court effectively made sports betting legal in 2018, the major leagues have embraced it. Playing this year’s Super Bowl in Las Vegas was a moment of major symbolic importance. But the trouble with gambling is that there’s always a price to pay.
FAI director of football Marc Canham and CEO Jonathan Hill. the FAI are much clearer about who they don’t want than who they do want. Witness that weird February episode when Canham announced that the search was over and the candidates would be informed of their fate.
As Neil Lennon, Chris Hughton and others heard they hadn’t got the job, the obvious conclusion was that a final choice had been made. It seems likely Chris Coleman was offered the job at this stage and turned it down.
Carsley’s demurral means Plan A and Plan B have gone astray. So unimpressive are the alternatives that the England under 21 boss is still fourth favourite with the bookies. Lennon, Hughton and Duff might not be a perfect shortlist, but it beats Sagnol, Poyet and O’Shea.
Canham claims it’ll all work out because it did when Vera Pauw’s successor was appointed. The reality is that after talk of world-class candidates for the women’s job, caretaker boss Eileen Gleeson ended up getting it because embolism aged 52. Whether it was calling a referee “the son of a donkey,” falling asleep on mike during a Champions League match or suggesting women should marry Dinamo Moscow fans because they obviously put up with anything, he eschewed the orthodox approach
He also campaigned against corruption within the game despite being physically attacked and, in the words of The Moscow Times, “single-handedly created the modern profession of football commentator in Russia.”
He even made a couple of cameo appearances in hit comedies.
But his opposition to the annexation of Crimea and the invasion of she was the handy option. Gleeson was probably telling the truth when she said she didn’t want the job. Easy wins over inferior opposition made her a good choice from a PR point of view. She’s apparently set for a return to her post as director of women’s football in a couple of years. Hardly an ideal long-term solution.
You wouldn’t expect anything else from Hill and Canham. If the CEO cared anything about Irish football he’d already have resigned. Instead he’s burned through much needed political capital by telling the Public Accounts Committee what Alan Dillon described as a “cock and bull story” about his financial arrangements.
That PAC hearing also revealed
that Canham’s plan for the future of Irish soccer would require government investment equivalent to the annual amount currently given to every sport in the country put together.
It’s not the first time the FAI’s undynamic duo have seemed absurdly naïve. The argument that money should be taken from horse racing and given to soccer was politically inept. Former international Kevin Doyle has pointed out that Canham’s proposal for a changed underage season would bring it into competition with the GAA and drive young players from the game.
A shocking ignorance of Irish realities is apparent. Insisting a national manager must report to Canham also seems strange when his experience is in running coaching programmes rather than managing teams.
The abiding impression is of two men floundering because they’re in over their heads.
The FAI’s Two Stooges will have to wait a little while more before finding a third member to join the act. But whether Moe Hill and Curly Canham are joined by Larry Sagnol, Larry Poyet or Larry O’Shea the joke will be on Irish football.
We’ve heard this one too many times before.
Ukraine saw him banished from the airwaves. Utkin had introduced Alexei Navalny at an anti-government rally as far back as 2011.
He retained the affection of the Russian football public. Current national team manager Valery Karpin described him as “interesting, intelligent, educated and understanding.”
“He told the truth ... I loved him,” said former Russia and Spartak Moscow boss Oleg Romantsev.
His death was marked by a minute’s silence before Russia’s win over Serbia on Thursday.
That’s how much he mattered in a country where independent voices are seldom celebrated.