We can deal with Bale
Having dealt with everything that Zlatan could produce, Martin O’Neill expects his players to cope this week, too
‘HE’S A HANDFUL, A TOP-QUALITY WORLD-CLASS PLAYER... YOU CAN GET OBSESSED’
BEFORE his team played Wales last October, Austria’s coach detailed some intensive plans made for Gareth Bale. ‘We will not only have only one player chasing after him,’ promised Marcel Koller, ‘we will have two or three players in close vicinity to disturb him as soon as possible.’
The match in Vienna finished 2-2, with Bale setting up both Wales goals. He made the second with a long throw, revealing a new aspect to his game-changing abilities. His manager Chris Coleman made a point of his indifference when responding to Koller’s fighting and eventually empty talk.
‘It’s normal; not a new game-plan,’ Coleman had said. ‘That is what he faces every week but it is very difficult to come up with a game-plan against brilliance and that is what Gareth is. You can work as much as you like defensively. You can shut them out for 89 minutes and, in a split second players like that can change the game.’
Bale, as expected, has been Wales’ best player in their World Cup qualifying efforts so far. In four matches he has scored four goals, but the problem for Coleman has been that the players around him, who were inspired during Euro 2016, have looked like the collection of modestly talented triers everyone presumed they were before their performances last summer.
Injury and suspension have disrupted Bale’s season at Real Madrid, but he will be the one world-class player on the pitch in the Aviva Stadium come Friday night. He will present challenges to Martin O’Neill that are at least the equal of those Ireland were confronted by in their meetings with other teams transformed by elite players (see panel).
Yet O’Neill is sceptical of the idea that his tactics must be bent entirely towards addressing the dangers of Bale, marvellous as he is. He expects those Irishmen confronted by Bale to know what to do. Stephen Ward can expect a busy week with the homework his manager has planned, then.
‘Do you know, players who might be in close proximity to him, up against him, for instance he plays at this minute for Real Madrid wide right-hand side, picking the ball up, I think players should look at these things,’ says O’Neill.
‘If I was marking him, I would have a little look to see what direction he turns. He’s got really good pace. He has turned a couple of players in La Liga there recently where you thought it was impossible to get out of it.
‘But in three strides, he’s got away from them. He’s a handful, a top-quality world-class player. But there are things you can do to try read what he might be doing.’ Ward will be Ireland’s starting left back, with James McClean probably deployed in front of him. If Bale looks to move in from the right, creating passing and shooting possibilities on his left foot, it will be these two detailed to curtail him. Of the suggestion that a manmarker could be assigned to the 27 year old, he was dubious.
‘If you’re asking will we end up manmarking him, I think great players can escape that,’ argues O’Neill. ‘You end up becoming totally obsessed with somebody. If he’s picking it up and becoming really dangerous, then I think our players in that area should try to react to it.’
He is not going to detail his plans for one of the best players in the game in a newspaper interview but O’Neill’s sentiments have been echoed by the Irish camp previously. During the Euros, they encountered superstar players in three of their four matches. The team was praised for the effective way they limited the influence of Zlatan Ibrahimovic against Sweden, but O’Neill’s assistant, Roy Keane, had rejected the suggestion of man-marking the forward then.
‘Man-marking is a no-go,’ he said. ‘I think you can man mark but it doesn’t seem to
7 The number of La Liga goals Gareth Bale had scored this season prior to this weekend
happen in the modern game. It’s just football intelligence. If there’s a certain player 30 or 40 yards out, you just get to him.’
Keane put the responsibility on the players, and that view fits with O’Neill’s before the match on Friday. However, Ireland did not treat Ibrahimovic as they would any opposition forward in that match.
As was pointed out to O’Neill, Glenn Whelan spent large stretches of the match staying much closer to his central defenders than he ordinarily would, thus encroaching on the space Ibrahimovic could target.
‘We’d only really do that for set-pieces,’ replies O’Neill. ‘What we didn’t want was for him to able to pull it down on his chest and then we’d get turned. So if we had someone a wee bit closer to him, the chances of him being able to make all those moves unattended are pretty slim. We dealt with him pretty well during the game and well done to our defenders.’
Bale is a more dangerous foe than Ibrahimovic. Where the Swede does most of his damage in finishing chances, Bale starts as well as ends them. His athleticism is terrific, and his ability to surge from deep
not only to goals towards the opposingthe year poll , andO’Neill voted for but himhe free-kickpenaltygavein FIFA’s Colemanarea opportunities also.player leads his of behind Claudio third preference Ranierias managerand Portugalof the mano year, ager Fernando Santos. He has a good relationship with Coleman, consulting him before Ireland played Bosuro nia in their Euro 2016 play-off. Wales had the Bosnians for company in their qualifying ‘He’s not going to tell me how Wales are going to play,’ O’Neill smiles when asked if he has talked to Coleman recently. The Welsh are third in Group D, topped by Ireland on 10 points. Serbia are second on eight with Wales collecting six points from four matches. Should they lose in Dublin on Friday, their interest in the pool will be diminished.
The importance of the match to the visitors is great, and Bale missing two recent league matches because of suspension will not have heartened Coleman. Bale was sent off playing against Las Palmas for pushing and kicking out at an opponent, seconds after getting a yellow card for fouling the same player.
It was uncharacteristic from a player used to being the centre of rivals’ attentions and whose temperament usually appears ice-packed. Irish supporters hoping his fuse is frayed and can be picked at might note that it was his first red card in almost eight and a half years.
More problematic for Wales was that it brought further interruption to his career after a period when he couldn’t play at all.
Bale missed three months earlier in the season owing to an ankle injury, yet his statistics in La Liga for the campaign so far are impressive.
Before yesterday’s match at Athletic Bilbao, he had played 15 league games and scored seven goals.
They are robust numbers, and the truth is Ireland will have no player approaching his talent in five days’ time. Nor, though, will they have a man-marker or a tactical design centred on curtailing him – if O’Neill’s thoughts this week are a guide.
‘You can have all these great plans but great players can extricate themselves from these situations,’ he says.
Every man for himself it is, then.