French alerted to presence of Keane

The French media might have been focusing on one particular name in the squad announced yesterday by Brian Kerr for the World Cup qualifying game against France - "Roy Keane face aux Bleus", as the L'Equipe website put it - but the Republic of Ireland manager also got around to naming another 22 for the key Group Four game at Lansdowne Road on Wednesday week.

The Manchester United captain returns to the squad after missing the friendly against Italy, as do Graham Kavanagh and Robbie Keane, both ruled out by injury from that game. The rest of the squad is along predicted lines, though this time Clinton Morrison will report for international duty as a Crystal Palace player, having left Birmingham City last week.

While Kerr expressed some contentment at the prospect of Morrison playing more first-team football - albeit no longer in the Premiership - than he was getting at Birmingham he admitted to concerns that neither of his regular front two, Morrison or Robbie Keane, has seen much club action so far this season.

Keane has played in just two of Tottenham's four games. Morrison has played even less first-team football, finishing his Birmingham career with a three-minute appearance in the opening game of the season against Fulham before coming on for the final 15 minutes of Palace's game against Stoke on Saturday.

"I'm just happy that Clinton's going to play more games - if he's going to play more games," said Kerr. "Jonathan Macken and Andy Johnson are also there (at Crystal Palace) and Jonathan did well on Saturday before Clinton came on. He still has a bit of competition there, but I presume that if they paid a couple of million quid for him they intend playing him. I'm just slightly disappointed he has not started a match since we played Italy.

"But there's not much I can do if Clinton and Robbie are not getting football. I don't know what impact that will have when it comes to the game next week. But, as far as I'm concerned, Clinton looked well and played well against Italy, and Robbie rarely lets Ireland down."

If Roy Keane is the player occupying French thoughts, not least because of the prospect of a midfield "reunion" with his old pal Patrick Vieira, the return of Zinedine Zidane, along with Lilian Thuram and Claude Makelele, has been the focus of Irish thoughts.

"I think Zidane is the outstanding world player of the last few years," said Kerr. "Ronaldo is up there in terms of a centre-forward scoring goals, but Zidane, in terms of being the playmaker, setter-upper and dominator of games, has been the class act going back several years now, probably since 1996."

While Kerr conceded the return of Zidane, Thuram and Makelele would make France stronger opponents than the ones Ireland faced in Paris he insisted he had faith in his team's abilitity to take what they need from their three remaining group games.

"We've got two homes and an away one to go. We need to continue playing with the desire, verve and confidence we've shown so far, and I've got a slight feeling that we're capable of that over the last three games. If we can do that, that will be enough.

"The three lads coming back is not going to change it very much. Everyone knows what it's going to take for us to beat them here. It's going to take the traditional qualities of Irish teams and not the sort of stuff your man was talking about when Domenech was having a go at us a few weeks ago in an interview - basically slagging us, having a laugh over the way we played in some of the matches, and stuff like that.

"It's not going to be like that - it's going to be us using all the qualities that we have, discipline, desire, passion and good football.

"And I think the fact that we are at home may have a serious influence on the game. If the people who turn up at the match in Dublin are as mad as they were in Paris it wouldn't be a bad thing."

REPUBLIC OF IRELAND SQUAD: S Given (Newcastle Utd), P Kenny (Sheffield Utd), N Colgan (Barnsley); K Cunningham (Birmingham City), G Breen (Sunderland), A O'Brien (Portsmouth), J O'Shea (Manchester Utd), R Dunne (Manchester City), S Carr (Newcastle Utd), I Harte (Levante), S Finnan (Liverpool); S Reid (Blackburn Rovers), L Miller (Manchester United), Roy Keane (Manchester Utd), M Holland (Charlton Ath), G Kavanagh (Wigan Ath), K Kilbane (Everton), A Reid (Tottenham), D Duff (Chelsea); G Doherty (Norwich City), S Elliott (Sunderland), C Morrison (Crystal Palace), Robbie Keane (Tottenham).

Group Four: How they stand

    P  W D  L  F   A  Pts

REP OF IRELAND  7  3   4   0 11   4  13

Switzerland                6   3   3   0 13  4  12

Israel                        7   2   5   0 10  8  11

France                      6   2  4    0  5   1  10

Cyprus                      7  1   1    5  6  12   4

Faroe Islands           7  0    1   6   3  19   1

REMAINING FIXTURES

Sept 3rd: France v Faroe Islands; Switzerland v Israel. Sept 7th: Cyprus v Switzerland; Faroe Islands v Israel; Rep of Ireland v France. Oct 8th: Cyprus v Rep of Ireland; Switzerland v France; Israel v Faroe Islands. Oct 12th: France v Cyprus; Rep of Ireland v Switzerland.