There is something mildly irritating about the advertisement which Seamus Coleman has done for an Irish supermarket regarding healthy eating and making the right choices.
Coleman is seen jogging past ne’er-do-wells sitting on a wall, when they could be also running round the place, and contains a cleverly packaged flashback to the days of his youth, where he is seen being teased by school friends. At the end he emerges from the supermarket clutching an apple, for his teacher, perhaps.
“I suppose I could have spent more time messing around,” Coleman says, “but I didn’t. I made a better choice.”
Had Coleman ever won anything in his 12-year career with Everton, it would be easier to excuse the Republic of Ireland captain being a little bit preachy. Coleman is probably the most successful present Irish player when it comes to carving out a Premier League career, but that is not really saying a lot.
No doubt the early-morning jogs around Killybegs, the fishing town in Donegal where he grew up, were worth it in the long run, given that Coleman has become an Everton legend, certainly. His contribution to Ireland has also been immense, unstinting and selfless, but still one wonders about some of the decisions he has made since he became an established Premier League player.
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A few years back he was linked with Manchester United when the former Everton manager David Moyes took over at Old Trafford, and even Bayern Munich, when the German club were looking for a replacement to Philipp Lahm.
“There was interest from numerous clubs but I never looked for a way out [from Everton],” he said a few years ago.
“Whatever went on between clubs went on, but I’ve always been happy at Everton. You can look back and people can say, ‘You need to push on, win things and get to go to the top.’
“However, Everton took a chance by signing me from Sligo Rovers. Loyalty is not really a thing any more in football, but I feel Everton have done a lot for me.”
A good agent might have reminded Coleman that Everton bought him for €60,000 back in 2009 from Sligo Rovers — the fans at Goodison Park love to sing about the price tag — and he owes the club precisely nothing.
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Coleman, at 33, reminds me of what Roy Keane had to say about Stephen Kenny and Ireland last week. “They’re doing OK,” Keane said. “And if OK is fine for everybody else in Ireland, good luck to them. Along the line at top-level football, I thought winning was part of that package. Maybe I’m wrong.”
The former Ireland manager Martin O’Neill once described Coleman as “world class”, which was patently ridiculous.
Coleman might have been placed somewhere near that category if he had challenged himself further in his career, by moving to a club where he genuinely had a chance of winning some real silverware. Then he could have been called a genuine winner, the guy who had made the right choices.
