Mick McCarthy's hopes of assembling a strong squad to face Sweden in the friendly at Lansdowne Road next Wednesday were enhanced yesterday with the announcement of England's squad for their game against Hungary at Budapest on the same day.
Delivering on his pledge to name a strong squad, caretaker manager Kevin Keegan included players from Manchester United, Arsenal and Newcastle after talks with the respective managers, Alex Ferguson, Arsene Wenger and Ruud Gullit.
Earlier, all three had railed against the idea of players having to take part in non-competitive international games at a stage of the season when they are overworked.
"I understood their situation and in the end they understood mine," said Keegan. "How could I select an England squad with any credibility and leave out players from three of the top clubs."
Keegan allowed Ferguson and Wenger to each choose two players to stay behind to rest. As a result Manchester United will keep David Beckham and Gary Neville at home in exchange for letting Paul Scholes, Nicky Butt and Andy Cole travel. At Arsenal, Tony Adams and Ray Parlour stay behind while David Seaman and Martin Keown fly east.
In fact, the England squad will include five United players as Wes Brown and Philip Neville have also been called up. It now remains to be seen how Ferguson responds to the request for the release of Roy Keane and Denis Irwin, both central to the club's end-of-season programme but equally vital to Ireland.
"To this point, there have been no withdrawals," said McCarthy. "When I announced the squad I did so in the belief that the great majority of the players would turn up for work and that is still the case."
A meeting of UEFA's executive committee in Tel Aviv yesterday established a task force to examine the European Championship Group Eight fixtures list in its totality and report back not later than May 11th.
The Republic of Ireland are scheduled to play Yugoslavia on June 5th and FYR Macedonia on June 9th at Lansdowne Road. The match against Macedonia in Skopje in March had to be postponed because of the Kosovo crisis. The FAI had been pressing for a definitive announcement from UEFA within the next week but will still be relieved that the decision has been brought forward from May 22nd, the date of the executive committee's next sitting in Barcelona.
"Ideally, we wanted the position clarified before the start of May but at least we now won't have to wait until May 22nd to discover if the games are on or off," said an FAI spokesman.
Aidan Lynch, UCD's promising central defender, has been called into the Republic of Ireland's under-21 squad for the meeting with Sweden at Birr next Tuesday. He replaces Millwall player Robbie Ryan who has a persistent ligament injury.
Joe Kinnear returned to Wimbledon yesterday for the first time since his heart attack.
Despite his visit, Kinnear - who has lost over a stone is weight since going on a special diet - is not about to get back behind his desk. He left all the preparations for Wimbledon's game against Newcastle on Saturday to his deputy Mick Harford and David Kemp, who have been in charge for the last two months.
ENGLAND SQUAD: Seaman (Arsenal), Martyn (Leeds), Campbell (Tottenham), Ferdinand (West Ham), Keown (Arsenal), Le Saux (Chelsea), P Neville (Man Utd), Brown (Man Utd), Southgate (Aston Villa), Woodgate (Leeds), Gray (Sunderland), Batty (Leeds), Lampard (West Ham), McManaman (Liverpool), Redknapp (Liverpool), Scholes (Man Utd), Butt (Man Utd), Sherwood (Tottenham), Shearer (Newcastle), Cole (Man Utd), Phillips (Sunderland), Heskey (Leicester).
