There is no good way of telling a player who thinks he is going to a major tournament that he isn’t going to a major tournament.
Alan McLoughlin tells a story about his call-up in 1990. He pulled up in a taxi at the Ireland hotel in Malta and walked in to meet up with the squad for the first time. Meanwhile the taxi stayed outside with the meter running, ready to take Gary Waddock, the man he was replacing, away.
On Wednesday, Martin O’Neill suggested he would wait until after the Belarus game next Tuesday evening in Cork before deciding on his 23-man panel for the tournament.
There is some logic in that – after all, why have a warm-up game if it can’t influence the squad for the finals? O’Neill likes his players to feel that there is always competition for places so maybe this is all part of that strategy.
“I think there are a couple of places still to be decided and I think that’s an opportunity for the players to stake a claim,” O’Neill said about the game in Turner’s Cross.
O’Neill may well have players he wants to take but he needs to see them play one more time to confirm his view. David McGoldrick may be one of those and it may be that he becomes the story on Tuesday night after the manager is persuaded by his performance that it makes sense to take him.
Later in the press conference O’Neill suggested he might yet name the squad this Saturday, but he still appeared to be leaning towards waiting until Tuesday, “until the last couple of hours after the Belarus game.”
In this, he should have the patience and understanding of journalists who know exactly what it means to have a deadline and to wait until the last moment before acting on it.
“I love deadlines,” Douglas Adams said. “I like the whooshing sound they make as they go by.”
There is a temptation among some people to leave things late, to feed off the neurotic energy and clarity of purpose the knowledge that the clock is ticking brings.
But with time tight in Cork, O’Neill might have to be imaginative if he is to tell his players. Perhaps he could get a note on to the pitch with a sub carrying on a piece of paper with what looks like tactical instructions which he hands to a player who then learns he won’t be going to France.
Maybe he can gather them around like David Brent informing his team of redundancies and tell them. “You won’t be missing out [long pause]…you won’t be missing out.”
“If there are one or two who are bigger than me, I may well write to them,” O’Neill joked at Abbotstown on Wednesday when asked how he would tell the players who weren’t going to make it.
He’d probably need to post the letters now. Ireland’s game kicks-off at 7.45 in Turner’s Cross on Tuesday, so O’Neill will have less than 90 minutes to get his squad finalised and inform UEFA before the deadline which is, according to UEFA, 22.59. Cork time.
UEFA will review the information and “afterwards published”, a spokesperson said on Wednesday.
O’Neill’s approach contrasts with Giovanni Trapattoni’s four years ago, but the difference does illustrate that there is no way of avoiding disappointment.
In 2012, Trapattoni named his final squad a few weeks before Uefa’s deadline, but decided at the final moment to leave out Kevin Foley and replace him with Paul McShane.
Foley talked of feeling “betrayed”, but the most bizarre moment of that development was that, having been left out of the squad in the morning, in the evening he came on in a pointless friendly against a Tuscan XI.
In that context, it might not be too strange that O’Neill wants to wait. A player who is left out of a squad he was never in might not feel as bad as somebody who is selected only for the manager to change his mind and “betray” him.
As Glenn Hoddle found out with England in 1998, there is no way of ensuring the correct response. Calling the players to his room to inform them one-by one might have felt like the kindest way of doing things, but it still took Paul Gascoigne by surprise.
Every player who is left out will feel there is a better way of doing it, but there does seem to more room for chaos in the aftermath of a game.
In Cork on Tuesday night, there should be plenty of time to get the administrative side of things done, even if the wifi in Turner’s Cross might come as a surprise to the journalists from Sweden, Belgium and Italy who are making the trip.
The FAI should have no problem sending an email to UEFA, but whether it is the best place for O’Neill to be telling the players who aren’t going is another matter.
His original plan was to finalise the 23 on the Saturday and then head to Cork for the training camp with the squad he’d be taking to France.
It would seem to be the more sensible idea in terms of providing a clean break for the players who have been selected with Cork becoming the training camp for the finals.
Yet O’Neill knows his own mind, and he knows he could still change things until late on Tuesday night so it may well be better to wait. After all, he is a manager who likes to leave it until the last minute to name a side as well.
There has been a different atmosphere in the squad this week as a number of players know they won’t be going. Beyond that, there are four players on stand-by who essentially are on stand-by to make the stand-by list.
They might think their chances of going to France are slim, but they can’t be sure. Under O’Neill, it is never too late.
