WORLD CUP FEATURE: ITALIA '90:Twenty years ago this week the Republic of Ireland, in their first World Cup appearance, bowed out to the hosts in the quarter-final. RICHARD FITZPATRICKlooks back on the football – and on an epic national adventure
LUCIANO PAVAROTTI, who later became synonymous with the tournament, sang at the draw for the finals of the 1990 World Cup. For the critics, there wasn’t much to crow about with the composition of Group F: Jack Charlton’s Irish team had been drawn against England and Holland, two teams from its group in the 1988 European Championships finals. Egypt, who were appearing in their first finals since 1934, made up the quorum. No Brazil. No host nation. The Italian press quickly dubbed it the “Group of Sleep”.
Not that the Irish team’s followers – 30,000 of whom travelled to Italy – were bothered. It was all gravy. Playing in its first World Cup finals, the country went la-la.
The opening tie – a surprise 1-0 win for Cameroon over Argentina, the title holders – gave an indication of the type of tournament that would unfold. The football was mind-numbing, but the game was full of drama with two Cameroon players sent off.
The following day Arnotts on Dublin’s Henry Street sold out its stock of Cameroon jerseys.
Two days on, the Republic of Ireland’s odyssey began when they played England on a greasy night in Cagliari. Things went quickly awry for Irish fans when, after eight minutes, Gary Lineker scored a poky little goal, like something you’d see on a curling rink. He seemed, in the words of Roddy Doyle, “to whack it in with his gooter and crawl after it into the net”. Two-thirds of the way through the second half, Ireland snatched an equaliser from their left-sided Everton midfielder. Kevin Sheedy, an ex-Liverpool player, lost control of the ball to Steve McMahon, an ex-Everton player then on the books at Liverpool, only to regain possession. It was a curious little dance before Sheedy finished exquisitely into the corner.
“I think it was a brilliant match. Only for Kevin Sheedy we wouldn’t have won,” gushed a female fan, ensconced in a pub, on Irish TV.
The Irish fans were invariably happy to win a match 1-1 as it were: with one conspicuous exception.
After a 0-0 draw with Egypt, in a game that pleased only insomniacs, RTÉ analyst Eamon Dunphy was indignant, as only he can be, ending a tirade by flinging his pen provocatively – not the magic one, mind, the one that highlighted the Voller-Rijkaard spitting duel; that would come later.
Dunphy had long been disgruntled with Charlton’s kick-and-rush football and his preference for effective though prosaic players like captain Mick McCarthy, a man who, if not the fastest off the mark, could still holler like a sea captain and throw a ball as good as a quarterback.
“We played like Neanderthal men,” says Dunphy. “It was a shocking day for soccer. I thought ‘if this is what soccer is I don’t want to watch it anymore’. My annoyance was because I was a football lover. It wasn’t personal to Jack. Jack was fine. He was a bit grumpy but he wasn’t a bad man. He was a good man, a decent man. It wasn’t a personal thing, but he took it extremely personal.
“We’d been pals. John Giles had played with Jack and when he first came to Ireland I welcomed his arrival as a coach and for two or three years we were buddies. I was away in 1988 in Germany when we qualified and I had dinner with him. But the thing we fell out about was David O’Leary. He had been banished from the squad for two or three years, which was absolutely outrageous. David was one of the best centre-halves in the world, but Jack didn’t like him and he didn’t like his style so he banished him from the squad. So I took up David’s case and tried to make it a cause célèbre, which it should have been, and that’s why we fell out.”
When news of Dunphy’s outburst reached Charlton, he was incensed. With delicious timing, Dunphy set off for Italy for the Dutch game, as part of a scheduled media trip. When he arrived at a press conference in Palermo, Charlton blackballed him. “I think he’s a bitter little man,” he concluded, bitterly. With the battle-lines drawn, the country largely rowed in behind the Englishman.
" The Evening Heraldran a poll, 'Who is the most hateful man in Ireland?' and, I think, 98 per cent voted for me. I just laughed, but it wasn't funny," says Dunphy. He endured one particularly harrowing moment when a mob of Irish fans surrounded his car at the airport, and began rocking it menacingly.
BACK ON THE football pitch, Ireland went behind again early on against the Dutch. Playing a neat one-two, Ruud Gullit ghosted through the defence and finished into the corner. It was a familiar station for Ireland.
Well into the second half, Packie Bonner launched another one of his mighty kicks, preceded with that famous grimace and a few short, dainty steps in the run-up.
This time it was Niall Quinn, getting on the end of a scrambled attempt by goalkeeper Hans van Breukelen to sweep up a back-pass, who scored the equaliser. Following what seemed a gentleman’s agreement between the captains to play out a draw, Ireland landed a plum tie in the knock-out stages against Romania in Genoa (the Dutch drew the eventual winners, West Germany).
Another dour affair ensued, save for a few heart-in-the-mouth moments whenever Gheorghe Hagi got on the ball in space. After two hours of play and no goals, the teams selected their penalty-takers.
Watching on, Big Jack exuded a Zen-like calm, unlike Tony Cascarino who, as he recounts in his autobiography, was wracked by inner demons and scuffed his shot, but luckily he had thrown his foot in the general direction of the ball with such force that it flew into the corner.
In the end, Daniel Timofte, the last Romanian player to step up, missed his spot-kick, and Ireland sailed through to the next round. The unlucky Timofte did, however, manage to salvage something from the debacle – he later opened a bar in Petroþani called Penalty.
The adventure for Irish fans kept going. A game against the hosts in Rome’s Olympic Stadium beckoned. In Ireland, the weather was balmy. It was like all of the 32 counties – or at least the 26 in the South – had reached the All-Ireland final at the same time. During the matches, the streets were emptied. Dublin Bus stopped running. Mick Jagger called off his gig at Lansdowne Road.
In the pubs, men cried. Strangers hugged each other. Afterwards, cars careered around Dublin with horns blaring like it was downtown São Paolo. There wasn’t a tree or monument in the city centre without some fella in Irish colours hanging out of it.
Charter companies from as far away as Egypt and Jordan had flocked into the country to organise trips for the die-hards to get to Italy. There was a run – in the physical sense – on the nation’s credit unions. Some fans, who were out of cash after three weeks abroad, came back to Ireland after the match in Genoa to rustle up some money “to try to get back again”. Insurance policies were cashed in. Washing machines and racing pigeons were sold.
Unfortunately, there was room for only 12 men to fly out on the Government jet commandeered by Taoiseach Charles Haughey for the quarter-final.
Meanwhile, Pope John Paul II received the Irish squad, decked out in their green tracksuits like a Community Games team who had fetched up at the Vatican. It felt a bit premature. You didn’t see the Azzuri scrambling to meet Il Papa.
And so it was. Ireland went down 1-0 to the Italians. Towards the end of the first half, Roberto Donadoni unleashed a rasping shot from 25 yards. When it swerved in the air at the last second, Packie could only pat it out towards an onrushing Toto Schillaci, him with the mad eyes, who slotted it home.
The tournament went on without the Irish. England, after a wobbly win over Cameroon in the quarter-finals, lost on penalties to West Germany. Paul Gascoigne was immortalised for being a blubbering wreck. Argentina squeezed past the Italians in another penalty shoot-out, and the final, a dreary encounter, was decided, fittingly, by a penalty from Andreas Brehme in the 85th minute.
Only 50,000 supporters turned up to greet the victors when they got home, compared to 300,000 who lined the streets of Dublin to welcome back Charlton’s valiant men. Nelson Mandela, recently released from Robben Island, was in town that day, too, to receive the freedom of the city. “OOH-AH, PAUL McGRATH’S DA,” chanted the Irish fans in College Green. “I SAY OOH-AH PAUL McGRATH’S DA.”
The goalkeeper: Packie Bonner
THE DUTCH were a really good team. I remember the first 20 minutes against them. Up front, they had Gullit over on the right, van Basten and Gillhaus, the lad who played for Aberdeen, was on the left that particular night.
Their movement, their inter-changing, with one coming on the inside, was quite incredible, but the ball never came to them because we had put so much pressure on their defenders and especially Koeman. After about 20 minutes, their movement stopped up front because they got bored, I can only assume.
Then, of course, Gullit scored, which meant we had to try to get something out of the game, and eventually Niall equalised. People kept talking afterwards about a caption on TV of my face grimacing, trying to motivate the team.
But it had nothing at all to do with that. It was mainly to do with Mick McCarthy coming back looking for the ball from me and me telling him, "Come on, get up the pitch".
The instruction was not to put the ball at risk at the back. He kept coming back looking for the ball. Eventually I told him almost to eff off. That's what the grimace was all about.
With the penalty shoot-out against Romania, there were a few things that happened. We were away for a long, long time, for nearly six weeks I would say. Niall and Dave O'Leary were rooming together. They were taking penalties every day. Niall had a little book going where, if you took three penalties and you scored the three, he owed you a fiver, and if you missed one you owed him a fiver. He was probably well up from the game!
So every day Niall would put on the gloves and the lads would take penalties on him. It was kind of a way of the guys practising unbeknownst to themselves. And that probably put Dave in a really good frame of mind and why he probably took the penalty.
Psychologically, because I had played decently well in the game, I was up for it; I felt really strong going into the penalties. And to be honest, in a penalty shoot-out, there is no pressure on a goalie because he's expected to let the penalty in – the penalty-taker should score from 12 yards. Also, we were never behind in the penalty shoot-out.
Then I went the right way for every penalty taken, unlike the Scottish Cup final that May when I went the right way for only one penalty in a shoot-out and went the wrong way for every other one! When Daniel Timofte walked up, he didn't look very confident at all. Then he stood at a very acute angle. I always knew – from the plan myself and Gerry Payton, our other squad goalkeeper, had devised – that he was going to put the ball at the same side as the acute angle that he stood at, which is exactly what happened.
The goalscorer: Kevin Sheedy
ONCE THE domestic season finished we had a bit of a break, then we went to Malta for about two weeks to acclimatise. I think most of the time we were there it rained.
The England game was scrappy. It was a wet night. It was a derby-type game. All of the players knew each other. It wasn't like a proper international game as such. Gary Lineker scored first to give them the lead, and we knew if we lost the first game, you're playing catch-up then in the other ones.
I remember I got the ball. I tried to make a pass but Steve McMahon cut it out. He'd just come on as a sub. He was a little bit cold, not up to the pace of the game, and failed to control it. I reacted quickly to it and it came to my left foot and I hit it. As soon as it left my boot, from years of doing it, I knew it was in. I caught it as sweet as I could.
I think that more or less finished his international career. He was just unfortunate, but fortunate for me that he made the mistake and I was able to capitalise on it.
In the penalty shoot-out against Romania, Jack was going around looking for who was going to take a penalty and I said I would take the first one. I had about 10 minutes – from the final whistle – to wait. It is a long time and you have the long walk up. My parents were in the stand, so it was a case of not letting them down as well.
I decided I was going to hit it down the middle, hard and high. Usually, I'm thinking: the first penalty, the goalkeeper will have to dive. He's not gonna just stand there and let me roll it into a corner. The reason for it being high was that if he did dive, then he leaves his legs there. Then he can save it with his legs. I went for power, hit it cleanly and it went in.
The Italy game was as big as it gets – 80,000, playing against the hosts, in Rome. We gave as good as we got. I just remember the referee was very biased towards them. Every 50-50 decision went their way and when it's such a close game sometimes that tips the scales.
The right-back, Bergomi, marked me tighter and closer than anyone ever did. I couldn't move. He was by far the hardest opponent I played against.
We were obviously disappointed to lose because we'd gone close. When you look a bit farther, Italy had Argentina in the semi-finals – obviously they still had Maradona – but they weren't the force that they were. We'd probably done as well as we could, but when you get that close you still feel, maybe . . .
The analyst: Eamon Dunphy
In the Egypt game we played like Neanderthal men. The game against Holland, we got an outstanding result and obviously the game against Romania, we got an outstanding result.
But they certainly could have done better because Jack's team selection was perverse. In the game against Italy David O'Leary and Ronnie Whelan didn't play. They're huge players. He'd fallen out with Ronnie for some inconsequential nonsense.
If he'd played the best team we certainly could have beaten Italy. Italy were a poor side. We didn't play at all on the night and we lost 1-0. If he'd played the right team, we might have got to the semi-final. It was an opportunity squandered.
The problem, fundamentally, was that he had some of the best players in Europe but he was using them in very strange ways.
And Jack wanted to do it his own way which was a pretty crude, Wimbledon-style, kick it up the pitch and get in the faces of the opposition, which took us a certain amount of the way but it's impossible to prove what might have happened had he been a bit more sophisticated as a coach.
The players he had at his disposal were unbelievably good – from Packie Bonner to Paul McGrath to Ronnie Whelan, Frank Stapleton, David O'Leary, Kevin Moran, John Aldridge, Ray Houghton. These were all players playing with top Premier League clubs or top First Division clubs as it was then.
The argument that he'd taken us to somewhere where we'd never been before is fair enough. But we had players we never had before or since. That's the judgment call people have to make.
Most of the players I've just mentioned would have got into most international teams in the world and we had them and we didn't make the best use of them. Conventional wisdom now from the people who played under his management – many of whom I've subsequently spoken to – is that it was crude and we could have probably done an awful lot better.
The other thing was that everyone in the country got involved in it because it was a great adventure and we hadn't been there
before, but most of the people didn't know very much about soccer so it was a kind of mob mentality. Soccer was on the front page of The Irish Times for the first time in history. Everyone had an opinion.
Anyone who knew about soccer would have been troubled by the crude tactics, but people who didn't know about soccer just thought it was great that we got to the quarter-finals of the World Cup.
In the end, the final was a very, very poor match.
It was a pretty grim World Cup in terms of the standard of play; 1990 was a low point in the international game in terms of skill, flair and more attractive football.
The sponsor: Arnold O'Byrne (Opel)
'I HAD so many work commitments during Italia '90 that I flew in and out for the matches. I went to them all except – except – for the one in Genoa, although I did read in one of the papers that I danced in the stands in Genoa.
In the dressingroom before a game, it was like being in church. Jack would talk to the guys but it was mostly silence, to give the players some time to reflect. Then as each guy went out through the door, he'd reach out and touch them; he'd put an arm around the player's shoulder and have a word.
The thing I'll always remember about the England game was that the Italian police turned up with dogs ready to attack us.
They were armed to the teeth. They very quickly realised that the guys in green didn't pose any threat.
The Irish fans were posing for photographs with the Italian police, asking them, "Can I wear your hat?" And they were allowing them. However, when you switched to the fans in white it was a different story entirely. It gave an indication of how well the Irish fans had done as ambassadors for the country.
I always avoided asking Jack after the games about them because if you did the first thing he would do is he'd grab the nearest piece of paper — or a table napkin — and he would then spend the next hour drawing how this guy should have run into this position or that position and he'd bore the socks off ya. He analysed every move.
I remember after the game in the Olympic Stadium in Rome, somebody said to me, "Come on, we're going to do a lap with the team". I said, 'I'm not doing that". The team had performed, not me. I had only put up the sponsorship money. It was the 11 guys on the football pitch that brought us the glory. And then, there's feckin' Charlie Haughey draped in a tricolour walking around. I'll be honest, it didn't go down well. The crowd wanted their heroes. They didn't want the hangers-on.
Jack was deeply disappointed after losing to Italy – I always remember that – because he thought we were going to go further. He thought we were going to beat the Italians.
And the one thing Jack could never understand – and he's often said this – he could never get his head around the reception at home.
