Euro 2012 was not Irish football’s finest hour, but it did leave us with one golden legacy. Once you’ve suffered the experience of being the worst-performing team in the history of the tournament, nothing seems quite so daunting ever again.
Belgium, Italy and Sweden is not the easiest group Ireland could have had but it's still preferable to Spain, Italy and Croatia. Being trampled by those teams helped us get some perspective on the world. While the last team went to Poland dreading the worst, we can hope their successors will just be aiming to make the best of their opportunity.
The order of games has Ireland opening the campaign against Sweden, meaning that their chances of progress will hinge on how they can perform against the side most similar to them in terms of technical ability.
Irish fans will travel to Paris in large numbers, but it’s a fair bet that the Parisians will be supporting Sweden, who are captained by a local hero, Zlatan Ibrahimovic.
This will be Zlatan’s last tournament and Sweden’s campaign will be all about him. The team dynamics already are. When the final whistle blew at the end of their playoff victory against Denmark – a 4-3 aggregate win in which Ibrahimovic had provided three of the goals – Zlatan dropped to his knees and raised his arms to the sky.
The rest of the Swedish players ran over and piled on to their Daddy. Zlatan is a level above everyone else on the team, but Sweden’s team spirit is not the weaker for it, because he’s developed into a leader who inspires rather than intimidates.
The Swedish under-21s won the European Championships in the summer and the coach Erik Hamrén has come under pressure to include some of the leading members of that team in the Euro team. It’s like Giovanni Trapattoni’s dilemma before Euro 2012: refresh the line-up, or continue to trust the men who did the work of qualification. Trap chose to stay loyal to his qualification team, and from Ireland’s point of view maybe it would be better if Hamrén made the same decision.
The locals in Bordeaux will also be happy to see a former favourite of theirs among Ireland's opposition – the Belgian manager, Marc Wilmots, who spent a season at Bordeaux in 2000/'01. Wilmots was a fantastic player, an all-action goalscoring midfielder whose rumbustious style inspired a series of farm-animal nicknames. In his home country he was known as "The Bull of Dongelberg", while the fans of Schalke 04 called him the "Kampfschwein" or "battle pig".
Sob story
He played in four World Cups for Belgium, a fact of which he frequently reminds his players. His last international was against Brazil in the second round of the 2002
World Cup
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In the first half, he headed what would have been his fourth goal of the tournament, only to see it ruled out by the referee. It’s Belgium’s equivalent of the Irish sob story from 1980, when Frank Stapleton’s goal was ruled out in Brussels.
Though everyone loved Wilmots the player, opinions are split on his ability as a manager. Belgians are well aware of the quality of the current generation of players and many believe that the quality of the football Wilmots’ team has produced does not match up.
Wilmots is a coaching pragmatist who says he’d be happy to win every match 1-0. As to the criticism he’s received in the Belgian media, he says it goes “in one ear and out the other”.
His own dismissive attitude to criticism doesn't stop him aiming plenty at his players. Belgium's most talented footballer, Eden Hazard, has been a frequent target of caustic Wilmots comments. The strikers Romelu Lukaku, Christian Benteke and Divock Origi have been rotated, with Wilmots expressing dissatisfaction with all of them at various times. On one occasion he accused Lukaku and Benteke of "standing there like two poles".
For all the grumbling about his approach, Wilmots’ results have been good: 19 wins and just two defeats in 25 competitive games. The bottom line with Belgium is that they have a lot of excellent footballers and even if the team is less than the sum of their parts, that’s still enough to win most games in international football.
Provided Ireland don’t lose both of their opening games they will still have some sort of chance of qualification by the time they face Italy in Lille. Antonio Conte’s team were unbeaten in qualifying but did just enough in both of their matches.
Strangest teams
Italy have been one of the strangest teams over the last decade in international football. If you look at their record in the last six international tournaments, they have been knocked out in the group stage three times, and reached the final twice. Generally speaking, the worse shape they’re supposed to be in going into the tournament, the better they perform.
Ultimately what’s important is not the identity of the teams Ireland face, it’s about how Ireland themselves perform. Everyone should be pleased with the draw. We have the chance to see Ireland spend a couple of summer weeks in Europe’s most beautiful country testing themselves against some of the biggest stars in the game. What’s not to like?
