2020 vision
Ireland’s future will be clearer after today’s draw for the Euros
DAVID SNEYD Finds Mick McCarthy in buoyant mood
LUCKILY for Mick McCarthy the secret was already out. He took an Aer Lingus flight from London Gatwick on the morning of his unveiling as Republic of Ireland manager at Lansdowne Road last Sunday, and nobody should have been in any doubt about why he was on board.
There would have been the usual lingering looks but, when he landed in Dublin, there was no mystery surrounding his arrival. ‘Mac to the Future’ ‘Return of the Mac’ ‘Mac’s Back’ Just some of the headlines over the course of the weekend which ensured everyone was up to speed.
That hasn’t always been the case in the seven or so months since he walked away from the Ipswich Town job and, as he discovered the day after Chris Coleman was sacked by his old club Sunderland in April, even going to buy a second-hand car from a close friend can lead to rumour, innuendo, and a wasted £100 bet.
‘Dave Bowman, he was my chief scout, he works at Ipswich, he worked with Ireland as well, he’s great with the players,’ McCarthy begins, taking up the story.
‘So he had a car for two years, he’d leased his car, he looks after it so I said, “I’ll buy that, it looks good”. He said, “OK, the garage is up in Sunderland”. So I jump on the train on the Monday morning. And they’ve sacked Chris Coleman the night before.’ Cue slapstick. ‘So I’m sat in this carriage, there is nobody else in it and the cleaner comes in. He’s walking towards me and he sees me. So he bends down, opens a bin and has a look. There is nothing in it because there is nobody on the train. And he has another look.
‘He walks past and goes to the next carriage. Then he comes back and has another look, and he’s walked past me…’
McCarthy recalls the ensuing conversation verbatim.
“You’re Mick McCarthy aren’t ya?” “I am, yes, yeah, yeah.” “You’re going to get the Sunderland job aren’t ya? You are.” “I’m not.” “I don’t believe you.” “I’m going to buy a car, I’ve got to get the train up.” “I don’t believe you.” “OK, then, don’t believe me.” ‘So he goes back out and he comes back in...
“Anyway, I’ve had 100 quid on you at 11-1”.
‘Seriously! So, then I go and sit in a pub [in Sunderland] in full view of everybody. Can you imagine I would have done that if I was going to get the job? It was hilarious and the poor fella lost his 100 quid. I didn’t know Chris was going to be sacked, talk about timing.’
It took seven minutes and 53 seconds for the first mention of Saipan in McCarthy’s main press conference last Sunday.
His return as manager for a second spell, one which he already knows will end when Stephen Kenny succeeds him on August 1, 2020, is not about redemption or salvation. McCarthy made the decision to walk away in November 2002 as the fallout from Saipan and a poor start to Euro 2004 qualifying turned toxic. Suggestions of having a sense of freedom in the job this time around don’t sit well at all. ‘It’s an interesting thought process you have. Because I know that I’m going, it gives me gay abandon to do what I want to do? Well, how about me wanting to enhance my career and qualify for the European Championships and do the best job I possibly can? ‘And then, irrespective of what happens in the European Championships, I want to progress. I want to go on and the better I do here, it will mean the better offers I get to move on from here.
‘I want to leave a good team here. It’s my professionalism, my pride, so I’m not coming here thinking “I’ve got two years here, I’ll just have a flute around”. I want to have the best team I can.’
McCarthy became a more prominent figure in Irish households over recent months with his duties as an analyst for Virgin Media.
So he takes this job with his eyes wide open, not just about results and performances, but the negativity surrounding the international team and condemnation from Matt Doherty regarding the previous regime’s methods.
‘Please don’t anybody go and “Mick McCarthy says” because I’m only here knowing what I do is very thorough. It’s interesting, I didn’t hear anybody complaining about preparation when Martin and Roy qualified for the Euros. Didn’t hear that. The players who are saying it, I’ve haven’t heard too much from the players who are playing.
‘Anything I say could be borderline criticism of Martin and Roy. I don’t want to do that. They qualified for the Euros not that long ago and it was all sweetness and light. I’ve seen them playing but don’t ask me to comment on it,’ McCarthy continues, citing his first days in charge at Ipswich Town for reference.
‘I didn’t know any of my players, none. I walked in on the Wednesday, I remember sitting, it was interesting actually, and all I got was negativity. It was unbelievable.
‘I sat down doing the analysis, I’m looking at this saying “what the hell have I done?” We’re all passing comments on players, but our goalkeeping coach, Malcolm Webster, to his eternal credit, said “gaffer, we’re not that bad, we’ve got some decent players. It’s all been negative but there’s some good lads and good players in this squad”.
‘And I said “well, thank fuck that somebody has told me that”. I was borderline thinking that I’m out of here. We trained and he was dead right. It wasn’t all bad... I don’t think it can be all bad here.’
Still, when the Euro 2020 qualifying draw is made today, McCarthy will have his fingers crossed that the fixtures fall kind to Ireland with games against the lower seeds to begin with.
‘I would be hoping that it would give us an opportunity to get off to a good start.’
McCarthy and Ireland will know exactly where they stand soon enough.
PHILIP QUINN Hears Stephen Kenny plot out a bright future
DIGGER O’BRIEN this week gave a telling insight into the iron fist under the velvet glove of Stephen Kenny. It came after Longford Town won promotion to the Premier Division for the first time in 2000. Richie Parsons’ goals had fired Longford up, and he was the fans’ favourite, but Kenny didn’t offer him a new deal.
‘The players were dumbfounded, but that’s Stephen,’ recalled the former ’Town goalkeeper. ‘People think he’s a little bit soft because he’s quietly spoken and he’s a gentleman. But there’s a ruthless streak in him,’ O’Brien observed.
Sitting in Lansdowne Road on a High Noon Monday Kenny will never forget, evidence of the former Dundalk manager’s ‘ruthless’ edge surfaced when he admitted he’d like to ‘earn the right’ to stay longer than two years as Republic of Ireland manager.
Unlike Mick McCarthy, who is ‘cool’ with the time limitations of a quirky managerial deal that could be anything from 12 to 16 to 20 months, once Kenny gets a toe inside the FAI door as boss, he intends to stay there.
‘I want to do a good job. After the Under 21s, I take over in August 2020 for the UEFA Nations League campaign and then the World Cup qualifiers to try and get to Qatar.
‘Obviously, my contract finishes then, but I want to be here for a longer period and earn the right to do that. If you’re successful, people would have a desire for you to stay on.’
And if all goes well? ‘The (2024) European Championships, ideally that’s what you want,’ he said.
There is a sense that Kenny has got the better out of this deal than McCarthy.
For starters, he has a longer runin, which involves a short-term managerial role with the Under-21s and overseer for all under-age teams.
By the time of the McCarthy handover, Kenny will be armed with information about all eligible players and will have identified those he believes can be of use to him.
In contrast, McCarthy has no such scope, yet far greater expectation.
Should McCarthy fail to reach the Euro 2020 finals, Irish football will need to assess what must be done in the long-term to achieve sustained success.
In such a scenario, jettisoning Kenny after two years would be regarded as recklessness on the part of the FAI and the Dubliner may find himself in situ as manager for longer than announced last weekend. Whatever unfolds, he will be ready.
‘I’m not going to waste the opportunity,’ he said. ‘I’m going to work every day to improve myself and improve the Under-21 team, help all the other managers with the underage teams, try to nurture the best players to be even better for the senior international team. That’s the plan.’
The Irish senior team has fascinated Kenny since his days at Old Bawn Community School in Tallaght where he used to get off early to catch the bus into town for the afternoon internationals in Lansdowne Road – there were no floodlights then.
As a 14-year-old, Kenny was at Jack Charlton’s first game as manager, against Wales, and saw Gerry Daly score the first goal of the Charlton era, against Uruguay, a month later.
He might have been impressed by the rugged commitment of the Irish centre-half that day, one Mick McCarthy.
Under Charlton, the team qualified for three finals out of four and later, McCarthy (2002), Giovanni Trapattoni (2012) and Martin O’Neill (2016) led Ireland to the finals of major tournaments. Improbably, of the 23 games Ireland played in those finals, Kenny was never at one of them. While a switch to a summer season in the League of Ireland kept him busy on the home front, it is curious that he couldn’t find time to take in a single game. An integral element of the challenge facing Kenny is the subject of allegiance, especially as international football has become a bit of a transfer market with players swopping between countries. Others hedge their bets, such as Declan Rice. ‘My job is to create an environment where players want to be here, enjoy coming in, and feel part of being Irish,’ he said. Asked would he share the view that a player is either Irish or he’s not, Kenny’s broad-minded awareness surfaced. ‘It’s more complex than that,’ he said. ‘A million people died in the famine, a million people emigrated. We’ve always had a diaspora, that’s why the Irish are so prominent in America. We’ve always had huge amounts of Irish abroad, probably more than most for a country of our size. ‘So, if someone had to go to England to work, and they have children, that shouldn’t dissuade them from playing for Ireland. ‘If players have parents from different countries, are they Irish or not? That’s for them to decide themselves. ‘They might feel if their mother is Irish and their father is from somewhere else, they may feel dual nationality, or maybe feel they are from the country they’re born in. It’s complex. ‘You have other (eligible) players who came to Ireland on their holidays and began to feel they’re Irish. It’s not all black and white. Obviously, it is a changing world and it’s something I’ll have to get to grips with.’ Last Sunday evening after the duel announcement, Kenny went for dinner in the InterContinental Hotel in Dublin with McCarthy, who had his backroom staff, Terry Connor and Robbie Keane, with him. Kenny had no one, not even his agent. Whether Keane will be part of Kenny’s senior set-up down the road remains to be seen, but Kenny has always been his own man and will make that call himself. He has yet to consider who will work with him at the Under-21s but at least he has time after the 2021 Euro qualifying draw on December 11 to map out 2019, and beyond. It’s 30 years since Kenny missed out with the Irish Under-17s selected for the European Championship finals in Portugal. ‘I was in the 22 for a training camp in Stewarts’ Hospital but didn’t make the 18 that travelled,’ he recalled. He has travelled a long way since then and, you sense, his latest journey could be the most rewarding of all.