New gaffer should make us very afraid

Locker Room:Somebody told me a story a few years ago which surprised and amused me. It concerned an Irish international player, a mild, self-effacing man who found himself considering a transfer to an English club, one of those sleeping-giant outfits to be found in rusting cities up north.

When the time came the player travelled northward to feel the embrace of his suitors. He found himself in an office sitting with the club's director of football.

They were waiting for the manager to come in off the training ground for a chat. The director of football was filling in the silence, telling the player that the club saw him as a good buy because he could play in any one of several positions, maybe here, maybe there. All good. all good, chirped the director merrily.

And the self-effacing, mild-mannered Irish international turned to the director of football and asked softly, "Sorry? Who did you say you were again?"

So the director of football said his name and offered his title once more.

The Irish international glanced out the window to see if training was nearly finished. Then he said, as if to nobody in particular, "Well, perhaps you should shut up till somebody who knows what he is talking about comes into the room".

And there in that story of an aborted transfer is the kernel of one of football's more disquieting problems.

In the aftermath of seeing a smart, eminently civilised man like Martin Jol walk the plank at Spurs having been forced to work under a director of football who was employed by the plank who runs Spurs - well, you would have to say the problem is not with the director-of-football concept but with the industry that runs football.

That industry, which is nothing more than the usual fumbling in greasy tills, grandly confuses itself with sport. And besuited bandits get their jollies pretending like they know the game they bought or politicked their way into.

In football there are too many people in the room taking too many decisions without knowing the first thing about football. Or much else.

For instance, Uefa, who have been something of a teeming aid shelter for pot bellies in suits down through the years, have apparently just decided to listen to the bellyachings of their brethren from the Wee Six over the case of Darron Gibson.

The upshot seems to be a decision to ban any player born and reared in Norn Iron but entitled to the passport of the Republic from actually playing for the Republic.

This extraordinary overstepping of the Good Friday agreement and all previous precedent seems legally unsustainable.

Aiden McGeady, born and bred in Glasgow and a schoolboy player for Scotland, should be entitled to play for the Republic. But the next Darron Gibson, born and bred in Derry, a city whose local team plays in the Republic's league, should not?

(What is it with these kids and spelling simple first names, by the way? Aidan. Darren. Tsk, tsk.)

The FAI (all bow and say a little prayer) could fill a Bertie Bowl with well-meaning know-nothings but they seem to have suddenly recognised their own limitations in this matter. It would be churlish to point out that the FAI's limitations are so recognisable to the rest of us that they have become a tourist attraction - churlish, but this column could churl for the county.

The FAI appear for the time being to have lost the unloseable argument with the suits from up North, and the sooner they accelerate to engaging our learned friends in the entire business the sooner the resultant limbo will be finished.

Chastened by recent events, the FAI are buying in expertise to help them with their next decision. Experts. Consultants. Headhunters. Paid scapegoats. It will be interesting to see if the FAI know just enough about football to employ the right headhunters.

Can the FAI, who sometimes could not find their backsides with both hands tied behind their backs, possibly know enough about football to find somebody (who knows enough about football) to manage Ireland?

It all raises an interesting philosophical conundrum. Little things (like Saipan and Genesis and Ta da! Heeeeeere's Stan, our world-class manager!) have managed, somehow, to convey the notion that the FAI know nothing about football. Now if you know nothing about football, do you even know what somebody who knows enough about football looks like?

Do you need headhunters to recruit the headhunters. Where does it begin?

Do you contaminate the entire process with your trickledown of ignorance?

Is it a good idea for you to be involved in football at all?

And what are we looking for anyway? Hopefully somebody with more than two months' experience?

This column feels strongly that it is important to choose a manager to whom the players should have no loyalty. The concept is redundant.

Brian Kerr made and created many of the current squad; Steve Staunton was a beloved and helpful senior figure to the same players when they came into Irish senior teams first. Some players never allowed what they owed to either man to disturb their pristine apathy.

The bubble within which content young millionaires live will not be burst by booing in Croker or by Stan stepping down. The next Irish manager might as well rule by fear as much as by any other means. He will draw his players from a soccer culture where professionalism is a concept about which many players have mixed feelings.

Irish players cannot, it appears, be cajoled into playing with care or passion, and they are no longer inspired to those things by the mere sight of the green jersey. So perhaps it's time to employ somebody who is just plain scary.

Football has lost its way somewhere. The acreage of newsprint related to peripheral football matters seems larger these days than that devoted to the pure excitement of the game.

It was fascinating yesterday to read a slew of interviews with Martin Jol in the Sunday papers. Not a scary man at all , but a man too cosmopolitan and cerebral and loyal to have been wasted on the barbarians.

You felt sorry for him having turned around recidivist failures like Spurs despite the limitations and greed of an ownership which insisted on shelling some 24 million for Darren Bent.

And it brought us back to a point the comedian Russell Brand made in his entertaining football column in Saturday's Guardian. Alex Ferguson and Arsène Wenger would not have stood for what Jol stood for. Neither, as Brand pointed out, is Hitler or Stalin but if they needed to annex small countries for the good of their team they would.

There's a lesson there.

The FAI have to have the courage to hire somebody they fear. Somebody who'll tell them all to shut up until somebody who knows what he is talking about comes into the room.

And if the suits are afraid, maybe the players will be afraid.

And some day maybe the opposition will be afraid of us too.