Euro 2016: Ireland show there’s nothing to fear and all to play for

The winner takes it all, as the old Scandinavian anthem goes, but as the Republic of Ireland teams have learned, nothing comes easily in Paris. A golden evening of football by the Irish should have ended in a win. But 1-1 – Ireland’s default scoreline – has to do.

“We will fight it through,” promised Martin O’Neill of the assignments against Belgium and Italy. The Derry man seemed at once proud and vaguely haunted by the thought that something special may have slipped out of his grasp in St Denis.

“I thought the players looked accomplished. We have desire. We have a never-say-die spirit. But I thought the players looked like they were growing into international football.”

That was true. For long periods, they owned Paris’s big football theatre. There was poetic justice that Wes Hoolahan, for so long the forgotten man of Irish football, illuminated the great stage of European football with a performance of delightful street class and a goal that will rank among the most famous in Irish lore.

And it was just bad luck that Ciaran Clarke, heroic and sure-footed in marshalling the big Z of world football, was the man who turned a devilishly tricky cross into the Irish net. One-each it finished but this was an evening in which O’Neill could be proud.

“I thought they were magnificent in the game with some really great football,” O’Neill said in a voice cracked and tired.

Jubilant

What an evening in Saint Denis. The suburb was crowded from mid-afternoon with beery and high-humoured Swedish and Irish fans sardine-canning the metro, equally jubilant about their chances.

Sweden had Zlatan, the green hordes the passed-down conviction that you’ll never beat the Irish. As ever on these landmark occasions for Irish football, the stadium was charged with emotion and, from the first whistle, a surge in green conviction that this team belonged here.

Every so often O’Neill would break from his huddled conference with Roy Keane to stand close to pitchside to survey an increasingly bold and considered performance by Ireland. The Paris skies stayed dry but Irish chances rained down.

John O’Shea had a point-blank chance in the 17th minute to add to his wine-cellar of rare vintage goals but just couldn’t get a foot to Clarke’s flick-on. Jeff Hendrick, in underwhelming form leading into the tournament, all of a sudden began to do a decent impression of Zinedine Zidane.

He tested Andreas Isaksson with a well-struck eighth-minute shot on a knock-down from Jon Walters and later let fly with a dream of a strike that cracked against Sweden’s crossbar.

Just a minute before that, Robbie Brady had come close from outside the box. Each of these moments held a message which must have steadily crept through the Irish team: there was nothing to fear here.

Meanwhile, the Swedes were conservative and content to plug long high balls for their superstar tall man, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, to do something godlike with. The cult of Zlatan is so overwhelming that he inadvertently strips his team-mates of their individual traits as footballers, and even as people.

The Swedish fans have reduced their song-book to a slavish chant of the big man’s name, leaving it to the Irish to belt out ABBA parodies. He is a compelling figure, Ibrahimovic, partly because in the flesh he doesn’t look like a footballer so much as a tennis pro baseline specialist who habitually exits at the fourth round at Wimbledon. He spent long chunks of the first half strolling around like a man somewhat bored by it all only to come alive in sudden flashes of energy and invention. But he had to live off peanuts. He must have looked at the chances that the Irish sent flashing across the Swedish penalty area with envy. By half-time, it was all Ireland.

“You didn’t have to say much at half time to the players. They were great, really great,” said O’Neill.

Hendrick continued his man-on-fire routine, to the point that if the Special One tuned in to check out his star signing he might well have ended up going bananas on Google for more data on the Derby County man. He tested Isaksson with another cracking drive just after half time as the conviction grew that Sweden was rattled. They were.

Hearts froze

Coleman took possession on the left, turned Martin Olsson inside out and sent in a treacherous chip that picked out an Irish shirt. Hearts froze. Time slowed down. Wes! All the wilderness years banished in the deft, confident strike. It was just a great, great moment in Irish sport.

What happened afterwards was predictable; the Swedes played with something close to abandon as Ireland – team and country – settled in for the usual blitz of scares and near misses and suddenly wishing the minutes away. Chasing a goal rather than keeping one is the national speciality but what resulted from Ibrahimovic’s dash and cut-back along the left side of Randolph’s goal was just plain bad luck. Clarke and Glenn Whelan had kept reins on Sweden’s danger-man all night.

The mass gathering of Swedish fans – en masse reminiscent of a huge convention of IKEA enthusiasts – erupted in sudden disbelief that the magic pony-tail had done it again.

He hadn’t quite: Sweden didn’t manage a single shot on goal in the game.

Funny, at 1-1, natural caution swept through the Swedes again and the Irish started to play football.

O’Neill sent in Robbie Keane for the clearly injured Jon Walters for 15 minutes but the half-glimmer never materialised for Ireland’s goal hero. Ibrahimovic continued to move with lazy menace but to no real consequence.

Toil and sweat

“They did it really well,” acknowledged Erik Hamrén.

“For the first 50 minutes we weren’t happy. Ireland did well protecting their areas and made us work for it.”

But this wasn’t about the reductive Irish virtues of toil and sweat and honour. In fact, those workmanlike virtues belonged to the Swedes. Ireland played football with style and poise in front of all of Europe.

Not quite the perfect result but O’Neill’s men know they have nothing to fear and all to play for. Bravo.