Staunton begins international journey

SOCCER/2008 European Championship Draw for qualifiers: For Europe it's a sort of crossroads, with motorways and rail lines linking Italy, France, Germany and the rest of Switzerland all passing through the otherwise sleepy Swiss town of Montreux. For Steve Staunton, though, the Lake Geneva resort where the draw for the qualifying stages of Euro 2008 will be held tomorrow is very much the beginning of an international journey.

Staunton is due to link up with FAI chief executive John Delaney and the association's president, David Blood, upon arrival this morning, and he will join more than 30 other national team coaches at the town's convention centre tomorrow morning when his employers will get the first inkling of whether they have appointed a lucky general.

It is hard to see the process, during which the 50 competing nations will be drawn into seven groups of seven and one of eight, handing Ireland anything other than a difficult route back to Switzerland and their co-hosts, Austria, in two and a half years.

There are clearly, however, degrees of toughness, with Greece looking the weakest of the top seeds, despite being the defending champions, while teams that might best be avoided include Italy and Germany, who are among the second seeds, and Russia, Ukraine and Norway, who are included in the third-ranked group of nations.

Before the main event tomorrow, Kobi Kuhn and Marco van Basten, senior coaches of Switzerland and the Netherlands respectively, will make the draw for the under-21 tournament, something Irish manager Don Givens will follow from his home in England.

The competition is in transition and a new, compact formula has been adopted in order to stage a finals tournament in both 2007 and 2008, after which it will revert to the traditional two-year cycle.

Givens' side, one of Europe's 16 worst according to the statistics, faces the rather humbling prospect of having to beat the likes of Andorra, Liechtenstein or Malta in a pre-qualifying round if the Republic is to make the group stages.

Those groups will each contain three teams, and, if they negotiate the play-off games which have to be played before July 15th , the Irish will be drawn as one of the third-seeded nations along with Cyprus, Albania and Latvia, who are among the countries sufficiently well ranked to have pre-qualified.

The groups will then be played out over three dates in August and September, with each team playing one game at home and one away. The winners of the 14 groups will, in turn, enter play-offs with the seven winners to join the Dutch in next summer's finals.

Before Ireland's campaign gets under way, however, Givens will bring what is, initially at least, a strong squad to the annual Madeira tournament, where the Republic will this year be defending the title they won 12 months ago.

Givens named his squad for the event yesterday, and included, for the first time, Manchester City's young midfield star Stephen Ireland among the 20-strong travelling party. Also set to take part in the tournament, at least briefly, is Aiden McGeady of Celtic.

The Irish are scheduled to play the tournament's hosts on February 14th, with games against Finland and Portugal to follow on the 15th and 17th respectively.

IRELAND UNDER-21 SQUAD: Doyle (Birmingham City), Quigley (UCD), Keane (Luton Town), Nash (Ipswich Town), McShane (Brighton & Hove Albion), Painter (Birmingham City), Hand (Huddersfield Town), McFaul (Notts County), Dicker (UCD), Collins (Huddersfield Town), Timlin (Fulham), Flood (Manchester City), Ireland (Manchester City), Foley (Bournemouth), Bradley (Drogheda United), McGeady (Celtic), Ward (Bohemians), Keogh (Scunthorpe), Yeates (Colchester City), O'Donovan (Cork City).