IRELAND LEGEND Paul McGrath says the national team’s players are giving their all but some lack the quality for international level.
The former Aston Villa star believes new manager Heimir Hallgrímsson has been dealt a tough hand and that some of his squad are “maybe not good enough” to perform at the level required.
“He has put a team out to try and win games but I think we need to stop leaking goals,” McGrath says. “The lads are doing as well as they can but we’re a long way short of beating the likes of England. We should be beating Greece, [though] they are not a bad side.”
McGrath is still an avid watcher of the Irish football team, as well as other sports like hurling and rugby. So what does he think must be done to stop a nightmare run that, excluding matches versus Gibraltar, has seen Ireland go over two years without a competitive win?
“Some of the players who left to play for other international teams, there has got to be a way that when players play for their country, they have to stay with them then. It seems stupid if they are basically letting them go to different countries. That’s something Fifa and other people are going to allow to happen so you just have to roll with the punches.
“I think the lads are trying their best, some I would think are maybe not good enough.
“Maybe we have to change the pattern of play to suit the players we have, which is what we did (under Jack). Some of us were not the greatest players but we could put ourselves about a bit and that seemed to soften one or two of the teams.”
Two players who did leave the Irish set-up, Declan Rice and Jack Grealish, were instrumental to the hosts’ loss to England in Dublin last month. What did McGrath think of their decision to switch?
“I have met Jack quite a few times and I love Jack for how well he did for Villa, so I hate the thought just because he is a brilliant footballer, he made a choice or his Dad made a choice or his agent made a choice, I don’t know, that they wanted to switch.
“I would rather he made the switch and if he didn’t want to play for Ireland, I would rather he moved out.
“Declan as well, I would rather he moved out. If he doesn’t want to play for Ireland, I don’t think we need him.”
He pauses and then laughs: “Turns out we might have needed him, might need them both! But if you are not committed to playing for this country, you shouldn’t do it.”
Perhaps the most criticised area of the Irish team of late has been the midfield. Josh Cullen, Alan Browne, Jason Knight, Will Smallbone and Jayson Molumby have all been given opportunities, though no one has produced a dominant performance in recent times to suggest they deserve to be a fixture for years to come.
McGrath is asked about playing a central defender, Nathan Collins or Dara O’Shea, in midfield just as Jack Charlton often selected McGrath further forward in the early parts of his reign.
“You could move either centre half in, I think Nathan is probably a better all-round footballer,” he says.
“But Dara I think would do what I was trying to do, which was just soften up and try to put a tackle or two in. It was the way I tried to deal with it because I knew I wasn’t as good a midfielder as the players I was playing against. Just tackle people and give it to the people who can play football.
“I think then you’d need the other players, the other centre-halves, or the lads in waiting, to come in and do as good a job as Dara or Nathan [in the backline]. I don’t know if we have those players. It’d be nice to think we do, but until you’re tested and stuff like that, in international football in particular, you honestly don’t know.”
Though there are major differences in the football landscape, psychologically Ireland are in a somewhat similar position now compared to when Jack Charlton took over in the 1980s.
Back then, confidence and morale were in short supply as the Boys in Green won just two of their eight qualifiers for the 1986 World Cup and finished second from bottom in their group.
McGrath suggests Heimir Hallgrímsson can learn something from the ruthless way Charlton handled established players such as Liam Brady in pursuit of success early in his reign.
“It’s easy for someone like myself to say but we don’t have the players,” the former defender adds. “I mean Jack did come in and tore the sheets up and said: This is the way we’re going to play.’
“We had the likes of Liam Brady and quite a few gifted players. For Ronnie Whelan and Liam Brady to accept that a centre half would go into midfield, it must have been quite a bombshell to them thinking what can he do that we can’t do and especially the style of football we were asked to play, to get it forward very quickly.
“Liam and Ronnie were two of our best players ever. It would have been difficult for them to say: ‘Yeah, we’ll just sit in the stands and if you want to call us on as subs…’ I know one or two of them were on the pitch.
“It would have been hard for them to accept the style of football that Jack wanted us to play. After playing four or five games you could understand what he was trying to do. I would still have wanted Liam on the pitch beside me and I’d still want Ronnie on the pitch beside me but I wanted to be on the pitch, I wouldn’t have cared if it was goalkeeper or centre forward.
“You have to be a big enough personality to say to Liam we want you on the team but I don’t want you collecting the ball here. I wouldn’t have said it to Liam anyway. But that’s the way Jack wanted to play, he was a big enough personality himself.”
Paul McGrath has teamed up with Pringles this Movember to champion men’s mental health. McGrath will serve as Pringles ambassador for its Movember campaign which is encouraging men to talk about their mental health. Throughout October, special edition Pringles tubes will feature a QR code that will bring users to the Mo Conversations tool which offers advice for people on how to open a dialogue with men about their mental health.
