Youthful promise of Alaba is a real threat to Ireland

In the English aftermath of the last World Cup in South Africa, amid the retreat from Bloemfontein where the score was Germany 4 England 1, the angst was such that England's next international assumed significance.

It's just that the next England team to play were the under-19 version. They were at the European Championship finals in northern France. Suddenly an anxious public wanted to know if there were any English boys coming through with the fluency of Thomas Muller or Mesut Ozil.

England's opening game was against Austria. England won 3-2 and the Tottenham Hotspur centre-half of that day, Steven Caulker, is in the current England squad. Caulker was England's best player.

But the game's best player, by some distance, was Austria's David Alaba, now a 20 year-old who will be in Dublin with Austria's senior team on Tuesday.

Alaba is six months younger than Caulker, in fact he was younger than every England player on the pitch that day in France. He was/is also ten months younger than Austria's main front man that afternoon - Aston Villa's Andreas Weimann. At this age level, these things are noted.

Alaba played in midfield where he set the game's rhythm with lovely touch and go passing. He scored from a direct free-kick and he hit the crossbar. You could tell he must have something because although Alaba was born in Vienna, the brackets after his name showed his club side to be Bayern Munich.

This was July 2010, three weeks after Alaba's 18th birthday. Four months earlier, at 17, he had already made his Bayern debut. Of all games, it was a Champions League last 16 knock-out match at Fiorentina.

Louis van Gaal was Bayern manager then, and Van Gaal has seen some good young players in his time.

He decided to give Alaba his second taste of first-team action in the semi-final against Lyon. In the second leg the 17 year-old replaced Bastian Schweinsteiger. Altitude was not a problem for this young man.

Fast forward less than two years - two months before his 20th birthday - and Alaba was in the Bernabeu stadium as Bayern Munich lost 2-1 to Real Madrid in the intense semi-final second leg of the European Cup, but then went through on penalties, the aggregate score being 3-3.

David Alaba was at left-back. Having looked so natural in midfield for the Austria under-19s, he looked so natural at left-back for Bayern. The comparisons with Bixente Lizarazu - eight years at Munich - had begun.

Alaba was booked, though, which he knew meant that if Bayern prevailed in Madrid, he would be suspended for the final in Munich. These sorts of things must prey on the minds of a 19 year-old.

If so, Alaba did not show it. After 30 minutes of extra-time of a see-saw game, Bayern were sent out to take the first spot-kicks. But it wasn't Arjen Robben or Schweinsteiger who took the crucial first kick, it was the teenager from Vienna. Alaba, nerveless, scored; Cristiano Ronaldo, taker of Madrid's first kick, missed.

We know what happened next, and what Alaba missed in Munich against Chelsea. He also missed the start of this season having been injured in a friendly against Lazio in July - in which Alaba scored.

So he did not return until October. It was in Austria's World Cup qualifier at home to Kazakhstan, just after the Austrians had drawn 0-0 away against the same team in a peculiar double header. That draw is one reason why the Austrians' Fifa ranking is 39 places below the Irish.

Alaba did not play in the first Kazakhstan game, only in the second. Austria won it 4-0 to give their campaign some air. Alaba was one of the scorers.

His absence meant he also missed the 2-1 home defeat to Germany in September. The results are why Austria entered last night's Group C fixtures in fourth place in the group, two points off the Irish.

Depending on the appetite of Zlatan Ibrahimovic last night in Stockholm, those positions may have changed - Austria were at home to the Faeroes. If the outcomes predicted by the bookmakers - two home wins - came to pass, then Austria will line up at Lansdowne Road on Tuesday night with a one- point advantage over Giovanni Trapattoni's squad.

Unless something dramatic occurred in Stockholm, Ireland and Austria may already be locked in a scrap for third place and a better group positioning in the draw for the next European Championships in 2016.

That sounds dispiriting but it might be reality. The two games against Austria - on Tuesday and next September - are far from side issues to the matches against Germany and Sweden.

How Alaba plays will inform Austria's chances as much as Weimann, running into athletic form with Villa and praised for having "another lung" by Paul Lambert last Saturday.

Alaba is equally fit - he played in both Bayern games against Arsenal in the Champions League - and at Bayer Leverkusen last Saturday. The Irish players will have seen a very good player in Ibrahimovic last night in Stockholm. In Dublin on Tuesday they will see another: David Alaba, 20.