From performing in front of 1,288 in a reserve team fixture on the outskirts of Durham on a cold Monday night, to facing the heat of World Cup qualifiers in Cyprus and against Andorra in Catalonia - it's a long way to Barcelona. But that is Kevin Kilbane's journey.
Named again in the Republic of Ireland squad yesterday morning, and on the verge of winning his 21st international cap, while Mick McCarthy was announcing his squad Kilbane was warming down after the previous evening's exertions as captain of the Sunderland second team. The team won 4-1 against Bradford City and remain top of the Premiership reserve league. Kilbane scored, a low free-kick from 20 yards that skimmed in off a Bradford defender. But these are seriously minor consolations for a player who was 24 last month and who, barely a year on from a £2.5 million sterling move from West Bromwich Albion, has seen his career as a Sunderland winger career into the advertising hoardings. Now on matchdays Kilbane frequently sits behind those, when not playing for the reserves.
It has been like that for months, though there is a chance Kilbane could face Chelsea at Stamford Bridge on Saturday if Niall Quinn is given the rest he thinks he requires by Peter Reid. Sunderland's shortage of natural replacements for Quinn is not dissimilar to the Republic's. Whether Kilbane is in position to take it - and positioning seems fundamental to his situation - is another matter.
For there has been a depressing and very public decline for a likable player who began the season in surging form. Successfully bedded into his new club, Kilbane started in each of Sunderland's first 10 Premiership games, and though he only scored one goal in that spell - against Derby County - it was not for lack of trying.
On so many other occasions Kilbane was rebuffed by excellent goalkeeping or the opposition woodwork that Quinn was moved to say that Kilbane was "one moment from greatness".
That remark came after the Republic's draw in Holland, when Kilbane, despite playing eagerly and with penetration, experienced one of the many near misses that have cursed his season. But the fine line between being a scoring sensation and being a nearly man can be measured in those inches of woodwork and fingertips that denied Kilbane his glory. Soon it seemed the closer Kilbane came to scoring the farther he went away. Frustration became anxiety, Sunderland crowd approval became Sunderland crowd abuse; Kilbane's confidence drained visibly. That, at least, is one theory. The truth, as so often, may be more complicated.
Kilbane has a left foot with a sweetness of strike that is unquestionable. Reid plays him on the right wing and asks him to cut in. The sale of Nicky Summerbee caused this gap, and Kilbane may have felt he was only filling it for a while.
But then Reid bought the gifted Argentinian teenager, Julio Arca, to play on the left, and even when Arca was absent for seven matches on international duty, Kilbane did not start once on the left wing.
An unnecessary red card following some petty conflict with Chelsea's Graeme Le Saux in October had also led to a spell out of the team through suspension. When he came back, Kilbane looked a different, more inhibited, footballer. He did not score again until as a substitute at Crystal Palace in the FA Cup in January.
That, though, was a welltaken goal, and afterwards Reid noted the apparent healing of Kilbane's fractured confidence. Reid, aware of the growing fan dissension, then talked up Kilbane prior to his first Premiership start for nine weeks, at Leicester, just over a fortnight ago. Partnering Quinn, Kilbane got into useful striking positions only to hesitate at the vital moment.
Sunderland lost, and any self-belief that had been on the brink of a re-appearance disappeared down Filbert Street. Now Reid talked of "protecting" Kilbane from a notoriously fickle support.
Consequently Kilbane has found himself back in the Sunderland reserves, trying to rediscover himself. On Monday night he seemed to have managed that, faster and stronger than the rest of a promising Sunderland team that included four other young Irishmen: Cliff Byrne, George McCartney, Thomas Butler and Brendan McGill. There were many shouts of support.
But none came from Kilbane. He did not want to speak about his circumstances afterwards, which is not his nature. All the while, internally and externally, pressure builds. It is to be hoped Cyprus and Andorra in Barcelona give Kevin Kilbane a release. A goal would do wonders. And it doesn't need to be a wonder goal.
