Mick McCarthy last night managed the sort of conciliatory tone in relation to his dispute with former international captain Roy Keane that has been rare up until now in their public references to each other when he described the Corkman's international exile as "a very sad situation". Emmet Malone reports from Moscow

Speaking shortly after his players finished their first training session since arriving in Moscow, McCarthy said that it was regrettable that such an outstanding player was not representing his country but maintained he was blameless in a situation that has only added to the pressure he himself is under.

"Of course the whole thing adds to the pressure, but as long as people keep giving it legs then this thing will run and run and run. I'm not going to deny it," said the Ireland manager, "because I'm on record as saying that when Roy played for us in the last campaign we were a better team and I wanted him, we all wanted him to play. But it's an unfortunate fact of life that it's not going to happen.

"He was already going to retire after the World Cup, although he's chosen to suggest that he might play again if I'm not here. But I can't do anything about that and if that adds to the pressure then so be it.

"It's a very sad situation really," he continued. "One of the world's best players is not playing for his country, but that's not my doing and I can't do anything about it."

Asked when he felt that he might finally might manage to put the whole thing behind him he smiled and said: "I'll probably have lost my teeth, my eyesight and all of hair will be gone. And I'll be hobbling through the pub with my pint and somebody will say 'eh, there's that bollocks that sent Roy Keane home from the World Cup'.

"I've no idea when it's going to end, but like I said I can't do anything about it. What I said I said."

McCarthy went on to observe he felt Keane's absence added to the pressure on him because even without his best player he would be judged on the basis of what the team achieves over the course of the coming campaign.

"It's all results based, whatever happens. So that's all I ever come back to because it doesn't matter who the personnel are."

The remarks confirm the extent to which the whole Keane saga has continued to hang over the national team set-up and McCarthy's tone is in stark contrast to Keane's at the weekend when he insisted that he stood by the remarks he made to the Ireland manager during the now infamous Saipan team meeting.

Though the manager's tone was much softer, there was still no suggestion he foresees his former skipper returning to the international set-up or that he would consider making a gesture aimed at enabling the pair to set aside their differences. Certainly, there has been nothing whatsoever from Keane to suggest that any such move will be forthcoming.

Ahead of Saturday's game McCarthy does at least have the consolation of an almost full-strength squad and the manager expressed his satisfaction last night with the fact that every one of the 22 players who travelled yesterday morning came through training without any problems.

The team would, he said, set out to win Saturday's game. "But if we took a point away I think that would be an exceptional performance. We would have to be very happy with that. Russia in Moscow has to be a hard game in anybody's book, it's probably our most important game in these qualifiers - apart from Russia at home - and I don't think that anybody, not France, Italy, Germany, Croatia, anybody, would come here and go into a game really confident that they were going to beat the Russians."

It is not clear whether he will confirm his starting line-up today or wait until closer to the game, but having already made clear that Kenny Cunningham will partner Gary Breen in defence and that Damien Duff will again start in attack alongside Robbie Keane, the only question appears to be whether Gary Kelly can be accommodated on the right-hand side.

However, there is a general expectation that Steve Finnan will play at right back and Jason McAteer on the right side of midfield.

A senior Russian football federation official, meanwhile, dismissed reports that tomorrow's game is under threat because of the smog that has hit Moscow as a result of fires burning in the peat bogs outside of the city.

Though a state of emergency has been declared in a large number of neighbouring areas and both of the city's main airports had to be shut down for a time yesterday, Alexander Dukmanov, the federation's executive director, said "the match will go ahead as scheduled, I guarantee it. We don't have any provision for a postponement."