Irish not ready for battle of the Balkans

It seems funny to be talking about the qualifying competition for the European Championships when we are still six months away from a World Cup finals. Most of the matches which must be organised against the teams Ireland were drawn against yesterday will not take place for more than a year and a great deal can happen in that amount of time.

Having said that, however, it is difficult to imagine that things are going to be altered so much over the coming months that this is going to start to look like an easy draw. The fact is that we have been drawn with two of the best sides in Europe and if the Republic of Ireland team can come through the group to qualify then they, and their manager, will have achieved something at least on a par with anything from the Charlton era.

Both Yugoslavia and Croatia are impressive sides. Their recent qualifying campaigns for this summer's World Cup proved that they were consistent performers at home, had players with match-winning ability and could score goals even when their opponents were doing their best not to let them score. Sadly, we tend to fall short in each of these three categories.

There will, doubtless, be some attempt to talk positively in terms of setting out to win the group, but that will fool very few. In reality, it is almost certain that we are going to have to target second place and then hope, as we did a few months ago, to get one of the easier draws in the play-offs. Last time, we actually did and it still wasn't enough to get us through.

Of course, when the draw was made, the managers of teams like Yugoslavia and Croatia would probably have seen Belgium as the third-weakest of their potential rivals. We would have been categorised as being closer to Hungary, who were subsequently completely outclassed by Yugoslavia. All in all, there is little comfort to be drawn from any of the team's recent history.

If we could make Lansdowne Road a place to be feared again, however, there would be some realistic chance of us sneaking through. During the Charlton years, nobody liked to come here because they knew that they would be in for an uncomfortable time from the beginning of the game until the end.

That began to change over the last couple of years and teams like Iceland and Lithuania came here and, without playing especially well, earned themselves a point. Suddenly, Mick McCarthy was having to go away under pressure to win, not a position you would want to be in against either of our main rivals in this group.

The transition from the old generation to the new will continue over the coming year, but McCarthy will certainly want to give himself as many options as possible going into what are, in some cases, going to be very tough games. There will not, I'm sure, be the same tendency to paint himself into a corner that he displayed when taking over the post and announcing his tactical plans.

The Irish boss will have learned from that experience, but he will need to get the balance precisely right between the players who have served the Republic so well over the past decade and some of the brighter new talent if we are going to prosper.

Damien Duff is just one of those likely to figure prominently for the first time during this campaign and the 19-year-old is undoubtedly a bright prospect for the future. But in common with the rest of his team mates from the side that achieved so much in Malaysia, this coming campaign is a championship too soon for Duff, his time is likely to start with the next World Cup draw. However, if nothing, other than the successful defence of our current ranking, is achieved over the next couple of years, then that may still look like a very worthwhile achievement when some of the younger talents begin to come into their own and the team starts to get significantly stronger again.

If we need a reminder of how much ground there is still to be lost, then we need look no further than the Welsh who have slipped over the past few seasons to the point where they are now fourth seeds in major international draws.

Yesterday, that translated into a group which also includes Italy, Denmark, Switzerland and, as it happens, Belarus. It would take the footballing equivalent of a miracle for them to come out of that.

The problem is, however, that teams fall into a chicken-and-egg cycle whereby they need to start beating teams in order to halt their slide, but keep being drawn in tougher groups. We are also moving in a downward direction just now and, on the face of it, finishing second would be primarily important because it would increase our chances of being a second seed next time around. Still, it's not easy to see which of the big two we might be better able to upset. Their games amongst themselves are likely to go a long way towards deciding who becomes the target.

Elsewhere, Scotland will probably be the happiest with the way the day went. Craig Brown is a very clever manager and he will surely accept that he has been handed an outstanding opportunity to qualify for another major championships.

The Czechs are still very highly-rated internationally, but they didn't look particularly impressive over the course of the World Cup campaign, while Lithuania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Estonia and the Faroe Islands shouldn't cause his team too many problems.

Glenn Hoddle, too, should be fairly pleased with his lot. There are no pushovers in group five with Bulgaria, Sweden and Poland all capable of causing an upset. But the best of the Bulgarians are getting on a bit now, while neither of the other two possess players of the quality of Alan Shearer, Paul Scholes and David Beckham.

A certain amount will depend on how England perform in the World Cup finals but if they can do well there, then their confidence will be very high in the autumn when they should really hit the ground running.

As for Northern Ireland, well, aside from Germany, who they seem destined to meet every time, their campaign to recruit a new manager may benefit from yesterday's draw. A few prospective candidates may just fancy themselves capable of engineering victories in Belfast over the likes of Turkey, Finland and Moldova. Which all goes to show how easily you can carried away with yourself in this game.

(In an interview with Emmet Malone)