Gavin Cooney

WE DON’T WHO they are and we don’t know where they are, but there exists somewhere in the world someone who will be the next Ireland manager. 

As to who they are, we do not know at this moment. The key question is whether they know who they are at this moment.

The FAI are sticking by their public line when John O’Shea was first announced as interim coach on 4 March: O’Shea was for this month’s international friendlies only, and the permanent successor will be announced in early April. 

“Existing contractual obligations mean we are not in a position to announce any further details on this point”, explained Canham. 

The natural thing to deduce from this is that the candidate has been identified, but that candidate could not be announced until early April because of their existing contractual obligations.

Hence why we seem to be existing now in a bewildering kind of fugue state: we are told there is a candidate, but nobody has a clue as to who that candidates is.  Secrets such as this one are rarely held this long in the football world, let alone at the FAI, where these kinds of mysteries have roughly the same half-life as Hydrogen. 

Senior FAI sources remained adamant this week that O’Shea will not be the next permanent manager, but O’Shea hasn’t been conducting his press duties with the air of a man who knows exactly who is coming in next month. 

One instance from the press huddle with O’Shea after Tuesday’s game spoke perfectly to the bizarre uncertainty around April’s mystery man. 

Asked whether he believes FAI’s mystery candidate actually exists, O’Shea replied, “I’d tell you if there was. I don’t know why I wouldn’t tell you.” 

When a follow-up question pointed out that the FAI have told us this mystery candidate does in fact exist, O’Shea replied, “From the wording I’ve heard before the previous games, they said they have. That’s my understanding of it.” 

Which then throws open a third possibility: that the FAI don’t fully have their candidate, and that while the process is still ongoing, O’Shea has been ruled out. (Neil Lennon, a rare purveyor of clarity in this story, said the FAI want someone with international management experience, which would rule out O’Shea.) 

The board were given an update on the search yesterday, and president Paul Cooke hinted at an ongoing process when speaking afterwards to RTE. 

“We got an update on the recruitment process for the men’s team manager”, he said. “We’re on schedule for an April announcement. The [exact] timing is not certain at this moment in time.

“We’ve narrowed the process well down. It will be revealed in April. We would be comfortable that the candidate will fit into our plan and processes going forward. The intention is that the manager will start as soon as possible.”

A narrowing of the process is a very different thing to an end of the process. Plus, how is the exact timing unclear if we are being told it will be announced in early April? 

That the hiring process may remain a live issue would also explain the players’ full-throated support of O’Shea this week: their compliments of the interim boss were far more effusive than media etiquette demanded they be. 

But while O’Shea appears to be out of the running for the top job, he may be retained as the next manager’s assistant. Asked if he would be interested in that prospect, O’Shea replied, “It’s a discussion I’d have with the potential incoming manager but that’s a wait and see job.”  

So if it’s the case that the FAI didn’t have their identified candidate on 4 March and may not yet have alighted on them, it is therefore plausible that a realistic candidate was just recently made available by failing to qualify for Euro 2024. Gus Poyet may be well advised to keep his phone on. 

As international football disappears from Europe’s consciousness until the Euros, Irish fans are still playing a waiting game. The announcement, we are told, won’t happen until after the women’s internationals, which means it will come from 10 April onwards. The FAI president, though, couldn’t commit to a date around then when asked in the aftermath of the board meeting. 

We may yet be proven wrong, but it’s beginning to look like the “existing contractual obligations” seem to have somehow been on the FAI side rather than the candidate’s. 

At some point in the cross-examination of this incredibly lengthy search process, the true meaning of “existing contractual obligations” will have to be probed. Its fate is likely to be a place in the annals of infamous phrases in FAI history, sitting alongside recent entrants like “bridging loan”, “Executive Vice President”, and “throwaway line.”

And so still we wait.