ON SATURDAY A former Irish international will coach England in an international game against Ireland. His squad features one England international who played at underage level for Ireland and another who played three times for Ireland at senior level before deciding he’d be better off with England.
Lee Carsley, Jack Grealish, and Declan Rice are the headline acts in Saturday’s tangled tale, but there’s plenty more when you dig a little deeper. The England captain, Harry Kane, has Irish heritage and was eligible to play for Ireland had he wanted to. Midfielder Conor Gallagher has used his Irish passport to be registered as an EU player at Atletico Madrid, as the injured Jude Bellingham did at Real Madrid a year ago.
On the Irish side, all of Max O’Leary, Callum O’Dowda, Kasey McAteer, Will Smallbone, Sammie Szmodics, and Callum Robinson were all born in England, and Robinson played at underage level for England. Evan Ferguson’s mother is English, meanwhile, so he could technically have played for England if he wanted.
Liam Scales of Celtic, meanwhile, opened his press conference this week by replying to a question as Gaeilge, but he too was technically eligible to play for England: his father is English.
“He’s from London, the centre of London really”, said Scales. “He is fully invested in my career for so many years now that it’s not even a choice for him. He used to bring us to the Irish games when we were kids and he has followed Irish football longer than me. That won’t be a difficult choice for him.”
By our count 12 of the 46 players named across both squads were once eligible to play for the opposing team, though that figure includes Rice, who has played for both. Given there is much about other players’ backgrounds we don’t know, that figure may be a very conservative estimate.
“England is massive”, says Scales of Saturday’s fixture, “the first one I’ll have been involved in. It’s hugely important, the history and everything that comes with it, the atmosphere.
“It is a similar sort of intense rivalry, that it’s not just about football. There is a bit of history and stuff so it’s brilliant to have them fixtures back to back an hopefully we can get a good result now as well.”
Scales arrives into the game in a rather novel position, having experienced a certain hue of the rivalry by playing for Celtic against Rangers in the Scottish Premiership last Sunday.
“Yeah, it’s not happened before that a player will have Rangers one week and England the next, it’s as good as it gets”, says Scales. “Hopefully we can do as well as we did on the weekend against Rangers, bring that in to Ireland against England.”
Celtic eased to a 3-0 win, an unimaginable prospect for Ireland against a side who have played in each of the previous two Euros finals. England are denuded by withdrawals – none of Bellingham, Phil Foden, Cole Palmer, or Ollie Watkins are available – and are in a new era under Carsley’s interim charge. But Ireland are at the start of their own process, this being Heimir Hallgrimsson’s first game in charge following the FAI’s protracted managerial search.
“Just be compact defensively and not be open, work as a unit”, replies Scales on the manager’s early instructions. “Tactically I can’t say too much, but be compact and difficult to break down, defending our space well and working as a chain in our unit.
“With Celtic we have time to work together every day and get things right, here it’s got to be everyone in and straight at it, take it all on board as quickly as possible. That’s what we are doing, trying to get the information, the way we want to play, bring that into the game on the weekend and hopefully we’ll get a good result.”
Having been on the brink of an exit from Celtic a year ago, Scales has made stunning use of a slight opportunity afforded by a defensive selection crisis for Brendan Rodgers in the third game of last season. Scales started against St Johnstone, kept his game for the next league game against Rangers, in which he won man of the match. He has started all but two of Celtic’s games since, a run which includes all six of their Champions League group stages last year.
The irony post-Brexit is that Ireland needs to loosen its football ties with England and the UK, with footballers now prevented from crossing the Irish Sea until they are 18. In this new era, Scales is a paragon: completing his Irish and Geography degree while playing with UCD and sufficiently impressing to earn a move to Shamrock Rovers, from where he made the step to Celtic and ultimately to the senior international team. If Irish football is to truly thrive into the future, Scales’ path has got to become the template.
His only issue is he is trying to establish himself in the most competitive area of the squad: centre-back. Though he can play at left-back, he is primarily at centre-back but has all of Nathan Collins, Dara O’Shea, Andrew Omobamidele and Jake O’Brien vying for two or three spots, depending on how Hallgrimsson sets up.
“Being left-footed, the centre-half that is left-footed, does give me an advantage but the manager is going to pick what he thinks is the strongest team and there is massive competition in that area”, says Scales.
“Four centre-halves are playing in the Premier League so it’s strong, but that will bring the best out of our players because it is strong and it is competitive and that’s what will bring the best out of everyone. I just have to hope that I get the nod and if not I will still be ready to make an impact off the bench if I’m needed.”
