Calm Down, Everyone!
29/03/07 22:24 Filed in: Sport
Hooray! The
Republic of Ireland football team win four games on
the trot! Twelve points from four matches! Whenever
we have done this before, qualification for the
tournament in hand has followed, so we're a shoo-in
for the European Championship in 2008, right?
Eh, no. Six of those points came from the home and away fixtures with San Marino, which at the end of the day, like, don't count. Whenever a group has San Marino in it, the other teams effectively start with six points and a goal difference of about +8 to +10 in the bag. It's like an international competition with Castlebar Celtic as one of the qualifying nations. San Marino is a punchbag, and you lay as many on them as possible, because you may need those goals later in the competition. We came out of our home and away encounter with the tiny republic with the six points, scored seven and conceded one. Our main rivals for qualification, Germany and Czech have already put 13 and 7 past them respectively and still have one leg to go.
So effectively, we have won two games. We won Saturday's game against Wales simply because Wales were even more awful than we were. The win over Slovakia was the first creditable performance since the draw with Czech on 11 October. There were a lot of positives to be taken from the game, and hopefully we will be able to build on it for the rest of the campaign. We still have to play Germany in Dublin and Czech in Prague, so hopefully by the time these fixtures come around, confidence and stability in the squad will have progressed.
I don't believe that we will qualify, but a third-place finish in the group would be a creditable finish, given the lack of ambition that the FAI has for the international squad.
Contrast that with Northern Ireland, who after a long period in the doldrums, are now top of their group, having beaten Sweden last night. The team is made up of Premiership journeymen and reserve players from Championship clubs, but when they play for Northern Ireland, they are transformed. This is because they have a very good manager in Lawrie Sanchez, who manages to get a lot more out of his players than should be available to him. His team adds up to a lot more than the sum of its parts. I hope they can keep up this momentum and qualify.
Eh, no. Six of those points came from the home and away fixtures with San Marino, which at the end of the day, like, don't count. Whenever a group has San Marino in it, the other teams effectively start with six points and a goal difference of about +8 to +10 in the bag. It's like an international competition with Castlebar Celtic as one of the qualifying nations. San Marino is a punchbag, and you lay as many on them as possible, because you may need those goals later in the competition. We came out of our home and away encounter with the tiny republic with the six points, scored seven and conceded one. Our main rivals for qualification, Germany and Czech have already put 13 and 7 past them respectively and still have one leg to go.
So effectively, we have won two games. We won Saturday's game against Wales simply because Wales were even more awful than we were. The win over Slovakia was the first creditable performance since the draw with Czech on 11 October. There were a lot of positives to be taken from the game, and hopefully we will be able to build on it for the rest of the campaign. We still have to play Germany in Dublin and Czech in Prague, so hopefully by the time these fixtures come around, confidence and stability in the squad will have progressed.
I don't believe that we will qualify, but a third-place finish in the group would be a creditable finish, given the lack of ambition that the FAI has for the international squad.
Contrast that with Northern Ireland, who after a long period in the doldrums, are now top of their group, having beaten Sweden last night. The team is made up of Premiership journeymen and reserve players from Championship clubs, but when they play for Northern Ireland, they are transformed. This is because they have a very good manager in Lawrie Sanchez, who manages to get a lot more out of his players than should be available to him. His team adds up to a lot more than the sum of its parts. I hope they can keep up this momentum and qualify.