YoG No. 11 – Ireland at Italia 90

Where do you start? As significant a month as there ever was in this country. In any sphere. When Jack Charlton, Packie Bonner and David O’Leary were added not only to the list that included Eamonn Coghlan, Ronnie Delaney and Christy O’Connor Jr., but the other one, the one that included Ulysses, The Joshua Tree and Oscar Wilde. This was beyond football. This was a sporting and cultural earthquake, and one that many out there regard as the nascent stirrings of the Celtic Tiger. We had arrived. Ireland – the country, not just the football team – had arrived.

The indescribable communal mania that gripped the nation for that summer is still felt. We still look back on it as the time when Ireland went from the odd cheeky grin, the nod and the wink, to a full-throated belly laugh and unapologetically threw off the shackles of a downtrodden history. The country, simply put, went absolutely fucking mental. For soccer. Men and women who had never seen a match in their lives were glued to their tellies. Men and women who would spit the word “soccer” before now were inviting over the neighbours for the matches. Whopping loans were taken out with the Credit Unions across the land. Work, school, everything stopped for each match. How do you think O’Connell Street will look when we kick off against Sweden this month? Quieter than normal absolutely. But will it be literally deserted? And I mean not one single soul, no cars, buses or bicycles on the main street of a city of over 1 million people. That’s how it was. It was magnificent, and I was 12 years old at the time – the perfect age for it. I was there for the two group games in Palermo, and while I was always going to be a football fan, I may not have gone to Poland in 2012, or bought several Ireland season tickets to date, or have tickets for France, if it wasn’t for Italia ’90. It changed everything. So let’s roll back the years and remember how it all happened.

Qualification

A bit of a stroll. 2nd place would do. We started off with a string of away games, drawing with Northern Ireland and Hungary and losing to Spain. With 4 home matches in a row, things turned radically in our favour as, first, Spain were beaten, before Malta, Hungary, and Northern Ireland were all brushed aside easily enough in the Lansdowne daylight in those days before the floodlights. All we needed then was an away draw with Malta in the last game. There was never even a question of an upset and we emerged 2-0 winners.

(All images in this post are from YoG’s personal collection of programmes and press cuttings)

Our reward was a trip to Sardinia and Sicily with England, The Netherlands and Egypt.

June 11th 1990 – Stadio Sant’Elia, Cagliari. Ireland 1-1 England

Euro ’88 was our baptism in major tournaments. A superior beast of a tournament in the footballing sense with no bad teams and few bad games. As soon as this one began, however – in the final build-up – we knew it was different. This was the World Cup, the greatest stage in sport. And Ireland was there. The Tricolour and Amhrán na bhFiann. For so long we had looked in from the outside as our closest rivals contested it; when our opponents that night won it in 1966; then their neighbours to the north, Scotland could not stop qualifying; and then as our nearest neighbours to the north qualified and made their own great memories in 1982 and ’86. When the hell was our turn going to come? So this was already different to Germany. Euro 88 showed them what we could do. It also showed the Irish public what Irish football could do, but now we had our chance to actually do it. And we bloody well did.

As I said here, this was no bad English side. Managed by the great Bobby Robson, they inexplicably drew a blank in Germany, but would return from Italy with their best performance at a major tournament since 1966. This was a close match. Massive thunderstorms lit up the stadium as the drowned fans kept the singing going. England took the lead through a messy Gary Lineker opener, and Ireland pushed for the equaliser; a good finish from Kevin Sheedy, but the build-up was ugly. A hoof from Bonner fell to Sheedy who played it forward straight to Steve McMahon, who rather politely gave it straight back, at which point Sheedy buried it from the edge of the box. A solid enough start all the same.

June 17th 1990 – Stadio La Favorita, Palermo. Ireland 0-0 Egypt

The England game wasn’t great, but this was a disaster. I think Steve Staunton had a long-range effort go close at some point but I choose not to remember the football. I do remember the occasion. We were staying in Sliema, Malta for the week and taking the Catamaran over for the 2 matches, there and back in the one day/night. I remember playing in a 20-a-side football match on the dock in Valletta at 5am, thinking I was Roberto feckin’ Baggio dribbling around all these adults and scoring a goal, blissfully unaware that they had all just arrived from the nightclub rather than their hotels. Drink had certainly been taken. I remember the queues for the jacks on the boat; the stench of vomit; and the horror stories of the 8 hour trip from Sardinia down to Sicily; the “I survived the Catamaran” t-shirts. Y’see catamarans are not made for drinking or being drunk, let alone the killer hangover kicking in to the poor lads as we crashed into every wave. The queue through immigration at Sicily was met with an hour or so of farmyard animal noises. Then a bus trip. We scoffed at the massive security presence; the outriders accompanying us all the way across the island; the sheer number of police. Do they not know we’re not English? But we got it wrong. This was to protect us. From the Mafia! Jaysus. At the rest stop along the way, we were informed not to walk away from the cafe or the bus in any direction. Grand so…

Palermo was a bit of a dive as far as I can remember, with little in the way of attractions. A town square somewhere and terrible restaurant service. It must have been really bad if a 12-year old kid at the World Cup remembers! But of course we made the most of it. We sang, we hung around the main square and we made our way to the match expecting a win. We didn’t get one. We were crap. Dunphy was right. How a team with those players failed to break down Egypt is beyond me. But then again, neither did the European Champions a few days earlier. We struggled on, enjoying the phenomenal hospitality offered by the Maltese. I must go back one of these days. Several thousand have since returned for holidays and Ireland internationals.

June 21st 1990 – Stadio La Favorita, Palermo. Ireland 1-1 The Netherlands

This day is when the real mania started. This may have been only the 2nd time that grown Irish men cried openly and publicly because of football – the first being Stuttgart two years previously. We never take the easy option and if a Scotsman had played a key role in Euro ’88, we have a much-maligned English centre-half to thank for this one. Mark Wright, a very good centre-half made hopeless by Liverpool in subsequent years, popped up with a header to put England 1 up against Egypt in the other group game, meaning all ourselves and the Dutch needed was a point each. As such, a complete lottery draw to decide the group in its entirety could be avoided and would only be done to separate the Irish and the Dutch. The only problem was that Ireland were 1-0 down and heading home as one of the lesser 3rd place teams across all groups with only 2 points.

Then – again – Packie popped up with a long hoof. Van Aerle attempted a dangerous back-pass to Van Breukelen, who spilled it towards the on-rushing Niall Quinn, and he slid in to score. We were behind the goal and the place went apeshit. Absolutely apeshit.

Another truly unforgettable moment in Irish football history. We made our way back to our coaches, completely drained, and drove through the night into the early hours to the ferry terminal. I don’t think we knew who we were playing in the next round until the following day. It’s not like your mate could text you, or you could watch it live on a pocket sized device. But it was Romania. The Dutch got Germany. That’ll do.

June 25th 1990 – Stadio Luigi Ferraris, Genoa. Ireland 0-0 Romania. Ireland win 5-4 on penalties

This was when the mania peaked. The day the country reached absolute and total pandemonium. When millions of Irish men, women and children streamed out of their houses, their offices, and their pubs, to simply cry and sing with joy in the glorious Italia ’90 sunshine that shone relentlessly on every city, town, neighbourhood and townland in Ireland that month. Unrestrained, unbridled joy. We were in the quarter-final. We had 2 new national heroes. Packie Bonner had already achieved a level of greatness in Stuttgart in ’88, but David O’Leary was as unlikely a hero as you could imagine. Isolated from Jack Charlton’s squad for years for refusing to travel to a tournament in Iceland, he returned. But to say he would etch his name forever in our national consciousness and that it would be his run-up to the penalty spot that would accompany George Hamilton’s most famous quote – “A Nation Holds it’s Breath” would have been regarded as total fantasy. But so it went. And nothing sums up the national euphoria that day better than this scene in “The Van”…

It was another dour enough game however, the dullness pierced only by a few Gheorghe Hagi belters from the edge of the box and a handful of Irish half-chances. The game limped through extra-time and into penalties. Simply put, we both scored all of our first 4, Timofte missed their last one and then a formerly exiled centre half stepped up and made history. I lay on the floor on my knees with my head in my hands and did not see O’Leary score. But I was on my feet straight away. And my Mam got me out into the car to drive around the place beepin’ the horn. As you did. Which was grand until we got to the pub and the car started getting absolutely battered (all in good humour obviously). It wasn’t a very imposing sort of vehicle, so we went home and probably just watched the whole thing again, waiting for the rest of the family to get home. Meanwhile elsewhere in South Dublin…

Ah jaysus… It was a different country then. It really was. But a Quarter-Final in our first ever World Cup awaited. And just to add spice to that, it was against host nation Italy. It was another magnificent occasion.

June 30th 1990 – Stadio Olimpico, Rome. Ireland 0-1 Italy

Schillaci simply broke our hearts that evening. A fast breakaway goal caught us on the hop and Packie’s slip was pure bad luck. We had our moments too, but ultimately beating the hosts in the Quarter Final was too much even for this blessed group of players (literally for this game, having met the Pope a few days beforehand). So we welcomed them home. As heroes.

Ireland have played in 3 tournaments since Italia ’90. Despite getting out of both World Cup groups in ’94 and ’02 with no little drama and heroism, nothing has captured the Irish public’s imagination again like that summer 26 years ago. And possibly nothing ever will. You never forget your first time. Italia ’90 is widely regarded as the worst ever World Cup. It was turgid stuff perfectly exemplified by a terrible final. The rules of football were changed in its wake – with the back-pass eradicated and several changes to the offside rule since. In this part of the world, however – both Ireland and England –  it became the stuff of mythology. We have all of the Irish heroics described above for us; and there was Gazza’s tears and their historically good performance for the English. All played out to the wonderful soundtrack of “Nessun Dorma” sung by Luciano Pavarotti. Epic performances set in an epic country to an epic soundtrack. To have lived through this month was a privilege; to do so as a 12 year old obsessive football fan even more so; and to have been behind the goal when Niall Quinn scored was an experience beyond words.

In the decades since, we have fallen in and out of love several times with the Boys in Green and the whole set-up – McCarthy’s near misses; Saipan; Kerr’s disappointing and unfair dismissal; John Delaney’s endless antics; the Steve Staunton era; Paris; and Trappatoni’s rapid descent have all pockmarked some great performances and decent periods.

But this group we have now is different to many of the previous ones. I think the people love this team almost as much as the class of 1990. Despite some of the results and performances, the campaign to get to Euro 2016 was brilliant – drama in almost every bloody match – late winners, late equalisers, one thoroughly magnificent home victory and a solid play-off win. So maybe, just maybe, when Shane Long bursts the net in Paris next week, we can well and truly relight that joyous Italia ’90 fire that raged across the country that month.

It’s up to us…

For now, a few more images to remember the Italia ’90 campaign including yours truly circled in blue on the cover of the Sunday Tribune from the Egypt game (honestly).