Soccer: After the recent traumas, the appointment of a new manager will come before other pressing business, writes Emmet Malone

After the rifts and ridicule of the past 12 months, this is something of a Year Zero for the FAI as the organisation seeks to rebuild a public image that took one hammering after another during the latter part of 2002.

The stated intention is to totally reorganise the association in line with the recommendations of the Genesis report, but the bulk of public attention will be focused on who is chosen to replace Mick McCarthy and whether the successful candidate can revive Ireland's prospects of reaching the finals of the Euro 2004.

Its current position in the group 10 table may look rather pitiful, but the cause is not quite lost with second place and yet another play-off still looking to be a possibility.

Having been defeated by both of its main qualification rivals in its opening two games, however, there is no more latitude for the sort of blunders that allowed Switzerland to leave Lansdowne Road in October with all three points and very little time for the new man to figure out how it is that he is going to turn things around.

Still, the limited pool of available talent means there will be relatively few changes in personnel or, most likely, direction. There is, of course, a need to integrate the brightest youngsters into the squad, but what is required first, foremost and most immediately of McCarthy's successor is an ability to extract more cohesive performances from a group of players that should have beaten the Swiss and certainly could have, on a better day, taken something out of the game with Russia in Moscow.

Both sides now occupy much stronger positions in the race for qualification, but there was little in the performances of either against the Republic to suggest that they can get through this group without dropping points. Jakob Kuhn's side, indeed, could manage only a draw in Albania in their second match of the campaign, and neither will be unbeatable in their return matches with the Irish

The new man's ability to breathe new life into the team may depend on his dealings with the Republic's former skipper Roy Keane, whose international future will figure prominently in his first press conference as Irish boss.

Through the last campaign it was the Manchester United midfielder who drove the Irish on at key moments, enabling a side previously prone to costly slip ups to match the much more fancied Portuguese for points in the final group table and to perform with more consistency over the duration of campaign than the Dutch. His presence would be an enormous boost in the games against Georgia and Albania, all four of which need to be won.

Keane's return would not be entirely straightforward. There are, for a start, doubts about whether he really wishes to play international football again, particularly given his problems with injury. His refusal to do so, however, after having played such a prominent role from the sidelines in McCarthy's departure, would leave him open to the charge of hypocrisy.

If, on the other hand, he does return, there may be some ill feeling on the part of other squad members, several of whom openly criticised the Corkman prior to his departure from Saipan and few of whom expressed any great regret over his loss.

The fact remains, though, that the FAI leadership would, for the reasons of its own public standing if nothing else, like to see Keane brought back on board and have made that much fairly obvious by choosing, in Bryan Hamilton, a man who confirms that he sees the 31-year-old's return as a key objective for the new coach.

In the circumstances an approach will presumably be made to the player quickly after the managerial appointment is confirmed.

Even if Keane were to return and the senior team's fortunes were to dramatically improve, there remains much else to be done by the FAI during the year ahead. Its internal structures and senior management are both to be overhauled, and for all the early signs of progress a huge amount of work is left to be done before the association can claim to have turned the corner.

Had Keane not departed earlier in the summer, though, and the team not lost out narrowly on a place in the quarter-finals of the World Cup it's hard to imagine that anybody would have been bothered much afterwards with how the organisation ran itself.

Now, as they look to appoint a man capable of rekindling the nation's love affair with its soccer team, it's a point that won't be lost on the officers of an association that could do with spending 2003 well away from the media limelight.