True. I wasn't necessarily assuming Michael O'Neill would want it, particularly considering he's doing pretty well where he is and is on his way to guaranteeing a play-off place for NI tomorrow night. He's just someone locally-based who I'd be happy to see get the job if it became available and he was willing, so that's why I mentioned him.
Just something further that came to mind on O'Neill's seeming neglect and repeated omission from even provisional squads of Cillian Sheridan, which I think to be pretty shabby and unsatisfactory...
In an interview with 'Off the Ball' about three months ago, O'Neill made the following complaint when asked about the Irish media's questioning of his squad selections:
"The questions will always be about the players you haven't picked, y'know? About 'why are you not picking that lad who is playing outside left in the Siberian league?'
Well, actually, y'know, I haven't had a chance to see him playing and, actually, he's 36 and didn't make the grade at Shamrock Rovers.
So, if the people asking the questions actually went and sat down and tried to analyse before they actually asked the questions, they might think 'mmm, this is actually pretty ridiculous', so let's go and concentrate on the players that we have."
Except nobody's asking that ludicrously distorted straw man "example" of a question, which, considering there had been articles and talk in the media at the time asking O'Neill to consider Sheridan and Seáni Maguire, obviously contained a veiled and exaggerated reference to those calls for Sheridan's inclusion in squads, as if the player is playing in some obscure league in the far east or mightn't be worthy of consideration because he "didn't make it" in the SPL with Celtic. Once again, O'Neill was using his sarcasm to deflect from a legitimate question about his methods.
It's entirely reasonable that O'Neill would be expected to keep a very close eye on Sheridan's impressive progress in Poland. If O'Neill can follow Kevin Doyle (who's actually much closer to 36 than Sheridan is) playing MLS in the US, he can certainly do his homework on Sheridan in Poland. He has plenty of time to arrange a flight to Poland and go over and watch Sheridan play if he somehow doesn't have access to match footage. This is the information age, after all, and the age of cheap flights. In fact, O'Neill said in a press conference last March that he would try and get over to Poland to see Sheridan play, but clearly nothing has been done on that front.
I just had a look at the Georgia squad and they have players from 16 different leagues in their current squad. That means their manager has had to keep track of all these players playing in each of those 16 different leagues across Europe (plus those possibly playing in other leagues who might have missed out on selection). Quite a few of those leagues are of much lesser renown than the Polish league. Serbia's manager has players from 12 different leagues in his squad. Martin O'Neill, on the other hand, more or less keeps track of what's going on in one country - England - or two/three at a push (if you include Scotland and perhaps the US, considering Doyle plays there, or Ireland, considering he attends the odd LOI game, although it's hard to know whether that's an aspect of his PR duties with the FAI or if he's on serious scouting missions then). Adding Poland to his itinerary shouldn't be that big a deal. Other international managers have much tougher assignments when it comes to keeping track of their players scattered across Europe or the globe and they manage it just fine.
To implicitly denigrate Sheridan on 'Off the Ball' for plying his trade in Poland in order to try and defend or justify the fact O'Neill himself couldn't be bothered to spend time monitoring the player just because he plays outside the traditional sphere of consideration/observation is a bit shabby, in my opinion.
To disparage Shamrock Rovers and employ them as the butt of his caricature was also a bit unseemly and uncalled for in light of the fact they're one of the biggest clubs in the country in which he manages and are the leading LOI club in terms of youth development in Ireland. You'd wonder is O'Neill even aware of the promising work being done there. I don't think you'd ever find, say, Gordon Strachan ridiculing a potential Scottish international for "not even making the grade at Celtic/Rangers/Aberdeen" or using such a detail as a yardstick by which to measure or prove that player's alleged failure or irrelevance in the world of football. I couldn't imagine him being so disrespectful towards his own country's clubs or casually dismissing its national league as a laughing stock. When Trap ignorantly claimed there was "no league in Ireland" (despite a number of his players having come through it), he was rightly criticised.
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