Jock and Joxer

I took a break from my summer stint playing Football Manager last night and was quickly reminded why I can’t afford Toni Kroos in the game.

He was scarily good when I saw the midfielder in Dublin a few months after Rangers died in 2012.

Despite announcing his retirement from professional football, the 34-year-old clearly still has it.

In the post-Brexit dispensation, the Brits no longer have freedom of movement on the continent.

Well, that was certainly evident last night in Munich.

Still, four points from six is doable. The Hungarians haven’t been the Mighty Magyars since before your humble correspondent first saw the light of day.

Of course, the Swiss defy any objective explanation.

I still don’t know how it functions as a nation-state, but clearly, it does.

A win and a draw against those two?

Yes, doable and Steve Clarke’s guys can still qualify.

For little nations, these football tournaments can throw up moments to keep forever.

In footie terms, it was a simple enough lobbed header from an Irishman born in Castlemilk and a Gran Muralla performance from a big Donegal man.

Nothing beats being there, and I nearly wasn’t.

That’s definitely a scéal eile!

Years later, after I had been there, my editor at An Phoblacht asked me to relive that day in Stuttgart.

Of course, Christy, the balladeer of so many of our experiences as Irish people, both good and bad, found just the right words.

Then, two years later, when Pakie guessed correctly for Timofte’s penalty.

Moments.

Dave O’Leary stepping up to seal the deal.

Could he do it?

We waited.

Jaysus.

Then, disbelieving levels of joy.

Some think those two football moments, unlikely as they initially appeared, kick-started the impetus for what became known as the “Celtic Tiger”.

Ireland, now a Second Wave success story, has slowly emerged from a long post-colonial stupor.

It was fitting that Jack’s lads were, in the main, a diaspora team.

Four years after Italia 90, it was Houghton again in the Giant’s Stadium.

I wasn’t in the Big Apple.

Instead, even better in a way, I was in my father’s county and had a total blast at Lavelle’s in Belmullet.

After we went one nil up against the Italians, there was a perfectly prim and proper national school teacher from Ballycroy standing in front of me.

Anytime an Italian had the ball, she became possessed by some counter-pressing demon in an imagined technical area:

“PUT HIM UNDER!”

Mental is a reasonable enough characterisation of the ambience in a spot where, quite literally, the next parish is in America.

Moments.

At least the Scots are there now in Germany and on merit.

It’s a scéal eile to survey the wreckage of the post-Delaney years here for Irish soccer.

If you want to know why then this is required reading.

Indeed, it seems such a long time since our last truly world-class player packed his bags in Saipan.

The Cork man is an unforgiving perfectionist, which is why he achieved so much in his playing career.

Last night Roy Keane was characteristically scathing of the Scottish lads.

Perhaps some musicians in Fair Caledonia might want to come up with something similar.

One day all of this will be memories.

Malky goes to Munich?