To
say that the game against Chile was a strange affair is an understatement.
An end-of-season international friendly seems like a pointless idea.
Most of the players have not kicked a ball in anger for almost a month
and they are tired after a long and arduous season.
If the players are being honest, they have already got more than one
eye on their summer holiday’s and they probably don’t want
to give it their all, a serious injury could scupper their plans for
pre-season training.
Also, Ireland seems to be rubbish at football at this time of year,
unless they are going to the World Cup that is.
Steve Staunton’s second game in charge of the Republic was against
Chile and he decided to play an experimental line-up and decided to
start with a 3-4-3 formation. After a poor opening thirty minutes this
was changed and the side resorted to a traditional back four.
End-of-season fatigue seemed to be clearly evident throughout the Ireland
side and Chile ran out 1-0 winners thanks to a second-half strike from
Manuel Iturra. It would be hard to find positives from the game and
it will eventually be confined to the backs of most people’s
minds.
However, there is one major plus point from the game, in that it wasn’t
a competitive fixture and some credit must go to Staunton for having
the guts to actually experiment in a friendly.
All too often during the reign of Brian Kerr, Ireland would play big-name
opposition and Kerr would turn out his strongest side. While he achieved
good results against the likes of Brazil, Czech Republic and Portugal,
Ireland struggled against teams much lower down the FIFA rankings (Israel,
Cyprus and Faroe Islands to name a few).
By playing Chile, the performance of the Ireland side will give Staunton
an idea of firstly, how to play against a lowly ranked international
side and secondly, enables him to make tactical mistakes without having
to pay a serious price.
Tottenham Hotspur right-back Stephen Kelly made his debut in defence
for Ireland, while Liam Miller and Kevin Doyle also started. Later
in the game, Ian Harte, Graham Kavanagh, Aiden McGeady and Wayne Henderson
also turned out as Staunton is still looking for his best team to start
in the Euro 2008 qualifiers that begin in September.
Speaking afterwards, Staunton said: “We experimented but it didn’t
work out and we have learnt from it - we know what we can and can't
do now. We finished the game strongly but when you start badly it takes
a long time to get over that.”
Staunton added: “There were a lot of positives. Young (Aiden)
McGeady came on and did well, Stephen Kelly made his debut and Kevin
Kilbane filled in at centre-half.
“The players are disappointed but we have to look forward to
what’s going to happen in August and September”.
“What I want to do is to make sure that I do what is best for
the side so that when we start the qualifiers, we are ready and prepared
to be the best that we can be. It was a bad end to the season, but
we will look to put it right against Holland in August,” he ends.
Reading striker Kevin Doyle admitted that the game was a “bad
way to finish the season” parti-cularly after he clinched promotion
to the Premiership with the Royals and also made his debut for Ireland – and
that the player’s lack of match practice proved costly.
“It’s always disappointing to get beaten, we didn't get
out of the blocks early and it continued from there,” said Doyle.
“It's a bad way to finish the season after beating Sweden 3-0.
A couple of the lads haven’t played for three weeks, me included,
where as they have been training. We were a yard off the pace at times.
“We had a couple of chances, nothing too clear-cut, but they
put theirs away. They are a very good team.”
So what now for Ireland after a varied and ultimately disappointing
season?
It was definitely a season of change for the Ireland set-up. After
the failure to qualify for the 2006 World Cup, many of the ‘old
guard’ stepped away from the international scene.
Captain Kenny Cunningham bowed out after being a constant and reassuring
presence at the heart of the Ireland defence. Roy Keane called time
on his controversial career after returning to the Ireland set-up following
the persuasive powers of Brian Kerr, who himself was shown the door
after his failure to qualify for both the World Cup and Euro 2004.
It does feel like a case of ‘out with the old, in with the new’ under
Steve Staunton, (although Sir Bobby Robson could hardly be classed
as ‘new’). The team look to have a new vigour about them
with the average age of the squad reducing thanks to new blood in the
side.
Ireland have a tough qualifying group for Euro 2008, and if they can
overcome the likes of Germany, Czech Republic and Slovakia, then it
would surpass anything that Staunton did in his illustrious playing
career, and would mean the Irish will return to the European Championships,
20 years after they burst onto the world scene with a bang at Euro
88.
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