Players may be losing their Mr Motivator, but O’Neill has the energy and self belief to minimize the damage
There is still plenty of time to get things right ahead of Euro campaign even with out trusty lieutenant Keane
As Ireland set sail for America, the manager could now be set free in the Land of Liberty
AFTER nine games without a win as manager at Leicester City i n 1995, a steward removed a fan-heater from the press room in Filbert Street after a draw with Port Vale and quipped: ‘Must be Martin O’Neill’s. It’s the only fan he’s got.’
Roy Keane’s imminent departure as O’Neill’s right-hand man hasn’t robbed the Republic of Ireland manager of his only supporter, but a vital prop has been loosened and it’s a damaging blow.
No one foresaw the good cop, bad cop routine (or ‘bad cop, bad, bad cop’ as O’Neill labelled it) coming to an end before the start of the Euro 2016 qualifiers. Thus far, they have been only clearing their throats in rehearsals.
As for O’Neill, to lose a run of games in international football can be unfortunate, but to lose your hand-picked assistant manager without playing a single competitive fixture seems careless.
And Keane has not just been an assistant. He has been O’Neill’s strong-arm Mr Motivator on the training ground and dressing room, an inspirational presence on a far different level to any previous number two. Maybe Keane didn’t twig, but he’s also been the potential heir apparent as Irish manager.
For all his disarming wit and machine-gun one-liners, there is no disguising that O’Neill has been wounded by the week’s events and the furore over the impending exit of Keane.
He took an audacious punt that Keane would work with him, and it paid off. But the gamble backfired as Keane’s profile soared and antennae twitched in club boardrooms.
The Irish players said positive things about him, and so did the media. ITV ratings shot up when Keane was on camera. It only took four friendly games and maybe half a dozen training sessions before Keane was morphed i nt o a superhero from the forgotten man.
If O’Neill found the instant attention bizarre, the fact that Celtic – his beloved Celtic – should return to bite the hand which fed them must have stung, as it was his time in Glasgow which defined his management career.
It almost led to the throne at Manchester United, and put him on the short-list for the vacancy as England manager.
And it was Celtic, where he held the torch with honour as manager, who tapped O’Neill lightly on the shoulder this week and said: ‘We want Roy. No hard feelings, OK? It’s just business.’
Had it been any other club, O’Neill could have caused a strop, demanded that the FAI man the barricades and tried to head them off at the pass. But not Celtic. Never Celtic.
As O’Neill sat alongside Keane in Craven Cottage last night, the argument could be made that the Irish team is perhaps best served with an undisputed skipper on the bridge.
Thus far, the story of this management duo has been a 50-50 split about O’Neill and Keane, Keane and O’Neill, Martin and Roy, Roy and Martin. At times, their roles seemed blurred.
In terms of media fascination, O’Neill got by in the committee room of the Malahide United clubhouse; Keane required the ballroom of the Grand Hotel.
Should it have been this way? In the past 30 years, when Irish football had spearheads such as John Giles, Big Jack, Mick McCarthy and Giovanni Trapattoni, there was one always boss; uno voce.
Perhaps O’Neill is better served by a loyal coterie of staff, like Seamus McDonagh Steve Walford and Steve Guppy, who keep low profiles and defer to his judgment, rather than having Keane’s shadow stalking him.
Deeply intelligent, O’Neill has never lacked self-confidence. It is a trait that is being tested now.
HE ONCE said, probably in pseudo-seriousness: ‘I only really doubted myself before I sat my 11-plus, honestly. I didn’t know whether I was going to pass or not, but then I was only seven at the time. I did pass.’
So far, he hasn’t had to sit his 11plus with Ireland. Instead, it’s been the mocks, and the results have been as mixed as they were in the early days at Leicester.
Yet, adversary is nothing new to O’Neill, nor is it to newly-appointed Irish managers. Between them, Charlton and McCarthy qualified for four major finals and reached three play-offs, spanning eight tournaments from the finals of Euro ’88 through to the 2002 World Cup.
Pointedly, both recovered from stuttering starts at the helm, which had stirred doubters.
Charlton was greeted by shrugged shoulders of indifference and just 16,500 attended his first game, which he lost at home to Wales. He didn’t win the next one either, also at home, in front of an even smaller crowd.
McCarthy fared worse as he stumbled through his first seven games without a victory, tweaking tactics and selections against a background of mutterings.
Significantly, both Charlton and McCarthy struck oil in the first summer of management. Charlton took a patched-up squad to Reykjavik for a triangular tournament against Iceland and Czechoslovakia and returned with a trophy and growing sense of self-belief in his tactics and in his players.
When McCarthy finally got over the line in the Giants Stadium against Bolivia, the result gave him as much satisfaction as the World Cup win there over Italy two years earlier.
The difference now is that O’Neill doesn’t have a tight-rope. Charlton wasn’t expected to get Ireland to the Euro ’88 finals, when only eight teams qualified, but, somehow, he did.
McCarthy was entrusted with stripping down the old Charlton engine and finding new parts. He was told there was no rush. Improbably, probably, he led Ireland to the 1998 World Cup play-offs offs at the first attempt and nd very nearly made it to o France.
O’Neill doesn’t have such a luxury. uxury. He was hired by the FAI with the specific ic remit to lead the country ry to the finals of Euro 2016, 016, for which there are e 24 invites – triple the e number in Germany in 1988.
Should he fail to do so, his appoint- ment as manager will have been deemed med a flop and his position will surely be
up for review.
In his 63rd year, O’Neill needs to draw deep on the energy, vigour and self-belief which have shaped a successful 25-year front-line management career.
For him, the challenge is to take a leaf from the book of a chief mentor, Brian Clough, and make ordinary players great.
Just as Clough had the knack of seeing something in players and sticking with them, O’Neill must sprinkle his managerial magic and make a motley crew of Irish players better than the sum of their parts.
On Wednesday, the next leg of the Irish voyage sees the squad set sail for the United States to engage Costa Rica in Philadelphia and Portugal in New Jersey, with O’Neill’s hand resting firmly on the tiller.
In the land of Liberty, O’Neill can finally break free.