It’s good every so often to get out in the world if for no other reason than to remind yourself that your situation at home is not uniquely miserable. We learned at least one thing from the national team’s trip to Plovdiv. For all that Irish football has big problems – crippled by lack of funds, cramped by poor facilities, torn with strife between the league and the FAI – it could always be worse.
Some 30 years ago Bulgaria made the World Cup semi-finals. The star of their team, Hristo Stoichkov, was the World Cup Golden Boot and the European Footballer of the Year. Fifteen years ago they could still draw a crowd of 42,000 to the Vassil Levski stadium to watch their team draw 1-1 with Giovanni Trapattoni’s Ireland - a match that stands out in my memory for the deafening noise created by the home fans.
“Was the match good?” the guy at the hotel asked as I left on Friday morning. He was apparently unaware of Bulgaria’s defeat. Fewer than 8,000 had turned up to see their team made to look like third-raters by Ireland. It looks like Bulgarians have stopped caring. Compared to the last time I had been here this was a sad parody of an international football match.
Still, my answer to him was, actually yes, the match was pretty good. A win’s a win, as Robbie Keane reminded us after the injury-time 2-1 victory in San Marino in 2007. I remember how annoyed we were to hear him say it then. We believed we were too good for a scrambled last-minute win against San Marino to be somehow acceptable.
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We’ve since come round to the wisdom of his point of view. We’ve learned to take what we can get. There’s a temptation to say beating Bulgaria doesn’t mean much. But people all around Europe have probably come to the same conclusion about their own teams after watching them beat Ireland: how do we feel about that? This is really just the old arrogance in a different form. Humility also means appreciating what you have.
“Listen, [Bulgaria] hadn’t lost at home since this coach took over 13 games ago now,” Heimir Hallgrímsson said. It was a statistic that hardly seemed credible after watching Bulgaria actually play for 90 minutes, but facts are facts.
For Hallgrímsson this game had gone according to plan and a coach can’t ask for much more. The inclusion of Ryan Manning had wrong-footed the pre-match predictions, but the coach explained that his idea was to line up with two left-footers on the left and two right-footers on the right. It was a new approach from the Ireland manager, whose previous selections have all included a right-footer in the advanced position on the left, usually Sammie Szmodics. Wingers cutting inside on to their stronger foot, this is the modern orthodoxy.
By reverting to the orthodoxy of 30 years ago Hallgrímsson shows he is prepared to think differently. On the night Ireland looked like they had a plan for how to score goals - a simple plan, but at this level at least, an effective one. Their methodical diagonal switches and deep far-post crosses eventually pulled apart the Bulgarians as they had the Finns. Hallgrímsson is focused on organisation in defence and attack; all going well this was a preview of Ireland’s approach to the World Cup qualifiers. It would probably be a mistake to see this as a phase of crawling before we can walk. The plan is to get very good at crawling.
Another good sign was seeing the team recover quickly from the setback of an early and somewhat embarrassing goal conceded. There are a couple of reasons why they seemed less flustered under pressure than we’ve seen in the past. One is their ever-increasing experience: a lot of these young players already have 30+ caps. And maybe the calm demeanour of the coach also has something to do with it.
Hallgrímsson’s coolness under pressure was evident in the disarming way he dealt with the stinging criticisms aimed at him by Stephen Bradley. He was gracious enough to apologise for the perceived offence, but also plainly not too worried about what to him seemed no more than a harmless misunderstanding. Come on guys, there’s no need for us to be falling out over this...
Cool heads alone can’t solve the conflicts between the FAI and the league but it helps when people are able to control their tempers and resist the urge to deepen the trenches. A character like Martin O’Neill might well have had a spikier response to being called disrespectful and out of touch by a League of Ireland manager. As it is Bradley seems to have responded to Hallgrímsson’s explanation in the same conciliatory tone, and peace has broken out, for now.
There was good news too from Copenhagen where Denmark beat Portugal in the first leg of their Nations League playoff. The winner of that tie will be the top seed in Ireland’s World Cup qualifying group. “That doesn’t surprise me knowing Denmark,” Hallgrímsson said, and the Danes did indeed give Portugal a good solid beating, missing a penalty and deserving to win by more than the 1-0 scoreline suggested.
Yet Denmark would still be preferable opponents for Ireland in the autumn. They’ve been operating at a higher level than Ireland for years now and the football they play is obviously more accomplished and sophisticated – but at least it is recognisably the same sort of game. It’s possible to imagine Ireland getting close to Denmark and dragging them down to our level: five of the six matches we played against them in 2017-19 ended in draws. Nobody wants to spend too long imagining what Vitinha and João Neves might do against Ireland’s midfield.
