Hakin Yakan used to strike fear into Irish hearts back around 2003. At the time we felt we were superior to the Swiss too but we couldn’t beat them in 4 attempts between 2002 and 2005. Cost us qualification twice really.
It probably took 4 years really to get over Saipan and then Stan wasted another two.
It was Trap who got us back in the game.
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Stan deserves a modicum of respect really. Drew at home to Germany and Czech Republic. Beat Slovakia and Wales in Dublin and picked up reasonable score draws away to them. Put on a clinic in Denmark in a 4-0 away win in a friendly one August night in 2007. It wasn’t all bad. Albeit he had a vastly superior squad of players to Stephen “Spock” Kenny.
The Cypriots were Stan’s downfall.
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There was an absolute air of resignation right from the start the night we played the Swiss at Lansdowne Road in October 2005. A win would have got us a play-off. The team could have been there until midnight and they wouldn’t have threatened a goal. I don’t even recall much if any genuine disappointment among the crowd afterwards, people were nearly glad it was over.
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I remember MON telling Tony O’ Donoghue that he had only lost 4 out of 23 competitive qualifiers during his tenure on the night of the infamous Denmark defeat back in 2017. MON’s win percentage probably well down due to his utter disdain for friendlies.
I had forgotten that in Kerr’s final game against the Swiss when we desperately needed a goal, his response was to take off Robbie Keane.
“Shambles”, as the panel described the performance that night, pretty much sums up Kerr’s tenure.
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Stan was probably out of his depth but there was hope there at times. Home wins over Wales and Slovakia, a very good performance in Slovakia when we really should have won, a home draw with Germany offered hope. 1-0 defeats in Stuttgart and Prague were hardly a disgrace Plus it was a stinker of a group he was landed with with two real quality sides in it and two more mid-ranking teams who were no pushovers - Slovakia would go on to eliminate Italy in the next World Cup finals. The feeling up to the Cyprus game at Croke Park was definitely that it had been a rocky campaign but there was improvement there. Cyprus weren’t that bad either. It was a miracle we beat them in Kerr’s penultimate game in charge when Given saved a penalty and they laid siege to our goal for long stretches.
I’d say we’d have reached a play-off for 2010 under Stan had he been spared the sack, though we wouldn’t have qualified.
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‘Moral courage’ was a fantastic turn of phrase.
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We beat Luxembourg, 3-0 at their place.
And on a dodgy hip. The man was a legend but lads around here forget the great things he did for our country.
For Stephen Elliott iirc. Who did fuck all before and after that in his career
He walked out when he was needed most.
It will always and should always be held against him.
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“There’s a young guy at Sheffield United, Alan Quinn, he can get it and pass it. He’s a better midfielder than anyone involved here.”
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Uninteresting fact: I spent an evening drinking pints with Stephen Elliott around 12 years ago in Larry Murphy’s pub (long since closed) on the corner of Baggot Street. Elliott’s old Manchester City youth team colleague Stephen Paisley was the link, as he was back playing LOI and working in Bank of Ireland at the time. Elliott seemed like an affable chap, he told us all the young Irish lads that were trying to break through at City some years previously such as Glenn Whelan despised Kevin Keegan.
Like British politics for the last six years, pretty much everything Keane has said for the last 20 years is based on protecting The Big Lie.
His Big Lie.
Deep down he knows it’s a Big Lie, we know it, everybody knows it.
The truth is he threw a massive temper tantrum, left his team in the lurch and missed the World Cup himself ostensibly over some minor imperfections at the training camp but much more so because he couldn’t control his own personality defects and because he’d been harbouring an irrational personal grudge against McCarthy for a decade. Even then he had a way back but was too pig headedly proud to take it.
And the truth is that deep down he regrets it all bitterly. That’s why he came back under Kerr. But he can’t ever admit that to himself, let alone admit it to anybody else. That would be too painful in the short term. He has to repress it, which channels the pain in a different way - more manageable on a basic level, yet much more lingering, and more unhealthy and more dangerous.
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Turkey who are traditionally very strong at home trailed Luxembourg three times the other night and needed an OG and a pen to scrape a draw.
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And the Faroes islands best turkey last night.
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Talk about an understatement.
Exactly, the gap between the seeds is closing all the time now. Sweden are on their way to league C sure as it stands.
No easy games in international football despite what the AI spambot from cork thinks