WAS Martin O’Neill suffering from a particularly bad case of pre-match tension? That was the question which emerged yesterday here at the end of a tetchy press conference in which he refused to confirm whether even the man sitting next to him, the team captain Robbie Keane, would play a part in today’s game against Georgia which kicks off the Republic of Ireland’s Group D qualifying campaign. O’Neill had given a series of single sentence replies and his media handler then intervened to stop him answering a question about whether Ireland should boycott the 2018 World Cup in Russia. Then it was put to him that he appeared tense.
“You talking about my body language all the time you get it so wrong it is untrue,” O’Neill replied sharply. “I am not tense, I would like to have answered that lady’s question but I will leave it. I am not tense. I am delighted to be here.”
O’Neill, perhaps in jest, then instructed Keane not to answer an innocuous question from the same reporter about the O’Neill motivational factor and the captain complied. A bizarre turn of events, though O’Neill has yet to settle properly in the job, even though he has been in it for nearly a year.
By this evening, however, we should have a better idea whether the Dublin businessman Denis O’Brien, who pays around 70% of the generous wages afforded to O’Neill and Roy Keane, might have been better off directing his money instead towards some infrastructure projects which are badly needed to allow Ireland to produce some good young players again.
O’Neill, as we saw again yesterday, understandably values his formidable reputation within the game, but it has been dented in the last few years because of the nature of his exits, first from Aston Villa and then Sunderland; does he still has the maestro’s touch or is he another 60-something manager whose best days are behind him and is seeing out his career on the international circuit? As it stands the Ireland set-up looks top heavy. O’Neill and Keane motivational talks are being organised with businesspeople, without a ball having been kicked in anger. Tonight, mercifully, that all changes.
Advertisement
Mandatory, it seems, for the start of any Ireland campaign is a trip to a faraway part of the former USSR and while they have been successful outings of late, there is no doubting that tonight’s opener against Georgia in Tbilisi is a fiercely challenging prospect. It’s still registering around 30C in this part of the Caucasus, and while the heat and humidity will have gone out of the day by kick-off, a fiercely passionate capacity crowd of 50,000 is expected at the Dinamo Arena this evening.
O’Neill, who admits that he has struggled to adapt to the rhythm of international football since he was appointed 10 months and eight friendly games ago — “it’s been a really long period of time,” he sighs — isn’t playing down the significance of what is about to unfold. “You know so much more from a competitive game. There is just no hiding place,” O’Neill says.
Then they stepped in at a competitive level and look at the start to their season and it has been a bit of a struggle. Now they have just about bought everybody, so they should be okay.”
A foray by O’Neill into the grey market that is the Fifa laws on dual-eligibility players has yet to yield any tangible results, though Mark Noble, the West Ham player is agonising over whether to abandon his England ambitions. While this squad has a very familiar look to it, there are some big question marks hanging over it nonetheless.
One is whether the steady erosion in the team’s form, confidence and morale in the last campaign under Giovanni Trapattoni, has been reversed by O’Neill, even to the point where the spirit of the team could again be its most valuable asset as it takes to the field tonight. The second, more basic one, concerns the actual make-up of the starting line-up. Trapattoni — and Steve Staunton before him — had no qualms about naming his team a day in advance,but O’Neill guards his hand.
Advertisement
This has left opinion split right down the middle on whether Shay Given or David Forde will keep goal against Georgia and that is not solely based on their respective merits or demerits. The build-up to the game has been marked by suggestions that Given only returned from a break from international football on the basis that he would be in the starting line-up and while O’Neill has denied making any promises , the suspicion has yet to go away.
The claim was made in the Irish Sun, which printed a Shay Given column up till recently, but when asked about it on Wednesday Given replied: “It was a bit silly, but you don’t believe all you read do you?” before turning on his heels.
Should Given play it represents a huge gamble by O’Neill. He is clearly better with his distribution around the park than Forde, but has played only one competitive game for Aston Villa this season and had a pretty miserable experience in his last competitive experience for Ireland dating back to the European Championships in 2012.
The other questions are whether he will find room for the most artful players in the squad, Wes Hoolahan or whether the more direct approach of Shane Long would be preferred.
The Georgia manager, Temur Ketsbaia, an old teammate at Newcastle United, was also sitting on the fence when asked whether Given should play, but other than that he was bullish, as Georgia are desperate for a talented group of young players to come good against Ireland.
Advertisement
Ketsbaia and the Georgian fans remember what happened back in 2008 when the Football Association of Ireland persuaded Uefa to move a World Cup qualifying game against Georgia from Tbilisi to Germany ,after Russia had invaded Georgia. The Irish move, said the Georgia manager yesterday was “not nice”.
It was that kind of evening.