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Seeds of Doubt for Ireland By David Thorpe
The fall-out from the worst qualification campaign by an Irish team in more
than two decades continues and the focus is turning to those players who
have consistently failed to perform while wearing the green.
Particular attention will focus on the under-par performances of team
captain Robbie Keane.
He has not scored a goal against any of the teams above Ireland in the
group and was largely anonymous in the crucial ties against Slovakia and
the Czech Republic
Although he missed the most recent games, Liverpool’s Champions
League-winning full-back Steve Finnan has been generally poor while wearing
the green for the last two years.
Keane and Finnan are two of the most experienced players in the Irish
squad.
Both are first choice players for top English clubs so the question must
be asked: Why can’t they perform as well while wearing the green?
Much of the cause of those players’ poor performances is to do with
the unfamiliar roles they have been deployed in by successive Irish managers.
Robbie Keane plays for Ireland as an out-and-out striker while for Spurs
he has evolved into an attacking player who sits behind the main striker.
It means that he scores less goals but is the main creative force for
the White Hart Lane club.
With Kevin Doyle as an old-style centre-forward there is no reason why
Keane couldn’t be deployed in his club role while playing for his
country.
Finnan has frequently been deployed at left-back for Ireland while he
was voted onto the Premier League team of the season in his natural right-back
position.
But while that duo can use the excuse of playing in an unfamiliar system
there are other Irish players who can have no excuses for their recent
ineptitude.
One player who Republic of Ireland fans across Britain have been consistently
critical of in recent years in John O’Shea.
The Waterford man has collected two Premiership titles with Manchester
United but most fans will be scratching their heads to think of the last
time the big man had a big game in an Ireland shirt.
Damien Duff has suffered from a spate of injuries in recent seasons but
in the games he has played for Ireland he has looked a long way from the
player who dazzled the footballing world early in his career.
It seems incomprehensible that any of that trio of players could actually
be dropped but these are crisis times in Irish soccer and crisis measures
may need to happen in the coming months. |
