Tom Humphries on Leeds United's Stephen McPhail, whose career at international and club level has reached a crossroads
If Irish football is dawdling at a crossroads right now that predicament is best mirrored on an individual level by the circumstance facing Stephen McPhail. Is the Leeds midfielder about to blossom into the world class player we have always felt he could become or is he going to backslide all the way to obscurity. Another erstwhile genius with a great future behind him? The best there never was? This is the time that will determine his fate.
He plays tonight in Athens on the left side of midfield, not a position to which he is a stranger but neither one to which he is fully accustomed. Beggars can't be choosers though and so many chances to right his career have eluded McPhail at this stage that he will take what he gets.
The flux which brought about the exits of both Mick McCarthy and Dave O'Leary in the past few months have been good to McPhail. Neither man was a particular fan of his languid talent. McCarthy once noted that even if McPhail were flying he would find it hard to accommodate him in his midfield, while O' Leary opined that he could see no place for a player of McPhail's style in the modern game.
Right now though in Don Givens and Terry Venables he enjoys the patronage of two managers from the old school, who appreciate the value of a man who can put his foot on the ball and deliver a 40-yard pass that most mortals would never have seen. Givens had his greatest day on the afternoon at Dalymount when young Liam Brady made his debut. The comparisons between Brady and McPhail have long since ceased to be useful or appropriate but right now McPhail gets his chance to put his name back on the same page.
He is surprised perhaps to find himself with so much football to play and not suited perhaps to playing in teams which struggle to assert themselves, but any chance to flee the netherworld of the reserves is welcome.
"The way things are going at Leeds, we're struggling as a team but I'm happy playing a lot more than in the last couple of years. At club level we have the time to put things right in the next few games. It's a big month coming up for us. For Ireland, I'm delighted to be playing. It's a cap for me. I just want to impress people, whether I play left midfield or left back or wherever, it's great for me to just be playing."
There are of course a babble of competing theories on Stephen McPhail. He's lazy, he's slow, he doesn't tackle. He passes like a god, he holds the ball when it needs holding, he finds the opportunities that others don't see, creates the chances that others don't dream off. His pass for Leeds United's first goal last Sunday was a case in point, a beautifully floated ball which just eluded the Bolton defender Anthony Barness and found Harry Kewell materialising as if by magic on the end of it. Kewell crossed to Smith. End of story.
Moments like that seemed set to make a star out of McPhail several seasons ago. Towards the end of the 1998/1999 season at Elland Road he got his chance, scored two against Chelsea and became a favourite of the fans.
The following year he played 38 games, himself and the Norwegian Eirik Bakke anchoring a midfield which saw Leeds into the semi-finals of the UEFA Cup and to a league position lofty enough to secure them Champions League action the following year.
With his career near germination McPhail got chopped down by injury. Two achilles tendon operations later he found he had missed almost an entire season. He went to the US Cup with Mick McCarthy in the summer of 2000. He should have been moving to the next stage when the trouble started.
" I was at the US Cup and played a couple of games and then I had my achilles operated on the week I got back. I didn't train or play for just about all the next season."
Last season when it became obvious that the esteem he was held in at Leeds was no higher than that which would get him onto the bench occasionally, he went to Millwall on loan. It was a last chance to impress Mick McCarthy in the spring.
" I enjoyed it," he says a little ruefully. "I got sent off in the first game, which didn't help though. I was suspended for three out of six games I should have been there for."
There was no clamour to keep him at Millwall. No surprise that he was asked to watch the World Cup from home in Dublin. By then anyhow Colin Healy and Steven Reid were well ahead in the midfield pecking order.
Yet he's back. Venables keeps him busy in Leeds' ailing side, and if Ireland end up with a manager who appreciates what Mick McCarthy used to call the "silkies", well then perhaps he might adorn our midfield for some time to come. He is feeling a confidence now which helps.
"Terry Venables has been brilliant with me. I always work on the defensive side. Terry has come in and helped me enormously with that and the tactical side. I still work on my passing. Defending isn't my greatest asset.
"On the first day at pre-season he's got us all together. We've learned different tactical things. For me it's a revelation. He's got me back playing. I have confidence. In the last two years I haven't had it, so the run in the team, it's given me more confidence and belief. I look forward to every game. I've always had belief in myself but he gave me a chance. I look to play well for him."
And tonight on an Athenian field in a team looking to avoid a big fat Greek hiding, he has the chance to take up where he left off when he played last for Ireland in Helsinki in August. A midfielder who can create, not just run and tackle. A novel idea.
He's older and wiser, he says. He'll be strong when he crosses the white line.
"We're all judged by what we do on the pitch. If we can go out tomorrow and play well a lot more will be said about what happened on the pitch than off the pitch."
