Sometimes even professional footballers are put out by the hours and Seamus Coleman winced for a moment as he admitted that the first thing he did when Donegal beat Dublin last Sunday was check the fixture list. It brought bad news: he has to work on All-Ireland football final day, Crystal Palace at Goodison at the worst time possible, four o’clock.
Coleman shrugs off the disappointment and, however much the match at Croke Park means to him, admits his mind will be elsewhere that afternoon.
He might well have been part of Donegal’s latest assault on the All-Ireland – Jim McGuinness has certainly suggested the 25-year-old had the ability to be a big part in his plans – and Coleman, an avid Gaelic footballer in his youth, would dearly have loved to have been.
Still passionate
He is still passionate about it and since Sky started broadcasting the games in Britain he finds himself acting as an ambassador of sorts amongst his fellow professionals. While there’s a love and a certain longing, though, there is no sense of regret. He made his call seven years ago and has, as he says, simply never looked back.
The choice had to be made after then Sligo Rovers manager Sean Connor spotted him playing in a pre-season friendly and offered him a two-year deal worth €150 a week. Connor’s successor Rob McDonald actually didn’t reckon he was worth even that and tried to encourage a move to Finn Harps but Coleman opted to sit tight until the end of his deal. As it turned out, he didn’t have to wait long before another change of coach brought somebody who believed in his potential again.
The salary Sligo paid him is generally now viewed as only the second biggest bargain associated with his career. Everton paid around €75,000 to bring him to Goodison five years ago and could probably get 400 times that for their full-back now. He is a rather unique case but his success has nevertheless made him a poster boy for the Airtricity League and those who see it as the best way for Ireland to develop its own talent.
Coleman’s progress has been relentless and his ability to overcome the obstacles he has encountered has earned him widespread admiration. A blister that became infected almost ended this career before it had properly started while an Everton debut at Benfica’s Stadium of Light where Angel Di Maria gave him an early taste of how a world-class opponent could make you feel when you’re not quite up to the task.
Mental strength
He clearly wasn’t then although he wasn’t the only member of the Everton back four to be overwhelmed as the team slumped to a 5-0 defeat but his mental strength and attacking abilities were both abundantly evident when he came on against Spurs in the Premier League a few weeks later and was absolutely central to the salvaging of what looked a most unlikely draw.
Since then he has scarcely put a foot wrong. The defensive side of his game continued to look raw for some time, even now it can occasionally look like a work in progress, and David Moyes initially preferred to play him on the right of midfield. Steadily, though, he learned about life in the Premier League and when injuries gave him a chance to stake a claim to the right-back’s shirt a couple of years ago, it was immediately clear that his time had come.
Giovanni Trapattoni was late in realising it and clearly saw his reservations as having been confirmed to some extent by the signs of inexperience when Germany came to Dublin and won 6-1. Since then, though, the overall package that Coleman brings to a team have marked him out as the team’s most gifted player with Roberto Martinez going as far as to describe him as one of the world’s best full-backs in the summer.
Ian Holloway, his manager during a brief but highly successful loan spell at Blackpool four years ago, suggested that it was his character that marked him out from the crowd and his application and enthusiasm are certainly major assets.
Team of the Year
Pace, though, along with the ability to create a goal and consistently complete a pass, probably did more to persuade his fellow professionals to include him in their Premier League Team of the Year for last season. He won just about everything going on the gong front at Everton too and, in one of his less-modest moments, might have wondered to himself what he would go for now given that Manchester United have been prepared to pay €37 million for left-back Luke Shaw.
Not buying Coleman was probably one of Moyes’s bigger mistakes during his time at Manchester United and for all his fond talk of the place, leaving Everton for a bigger rival would probably start to look like an error on the player’s part if the club does not somehow break into the Champions League next season. In the meantime, there will be the opportunity to see how he copes with Di Maria.
On the international front over the next year or so, the biggest test will be a familiar one: dealing with Germany. But the responsibility to deliver in all of Ireland’s games, particularly those against the team’s closer rivals, will be greater than ever now that the world knows how good he really is.
