Jack Charlton was in charge, Mick McCarthy was captain – Italia 90 was undoubtedly the absolute heyday of Irish Football, with Jack Charlton’s men famously going all the way to the quarter-finals before being knocked out by Italy.
While today the tournament is written into folklore and revered as one of the greatest times to be Irish, Ireland’s progress to the knockout stages hinged on their success in an all-difficult group of England, Netherlands and Egypt.
Ireland got off to a flying start in the group stages, earning a 1-1 draw against England, however, progress ground to a halt when all Ireland could conjure from the all-important Egypt clash was a 0-0 draw.
The back-to-back draws meant that the hopes of a country were riding on the final qualifying group clash against the Netherlands. An early goal from Ruud Gullit had Ireland’s World Cup hopes on thin ice until Niall Quinn levelled the affair with just twenty minutes left, with both sides needing only a draw to qualify.
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21 June 1990; The Republic of Ireland team, back row, from left, Kevin Moran, Niall Quinn, Paul mcGrath, Packie Bonner, Mick McCarthy and Steve Staunton, with, front, from left, John Aldridge, Andy Townsend, Chris Morris, Kevin Sheedy and Ray Houghton prior to the FIFA World Cup 1990 Group F match between Republic of Ireland and Netherlands at Stadio La Favorita in Palermo, Italy. Photo by Ray McManus/Sportsfile
Jack Charlton reveals how the referee nearly spoiled his Italia 90 masterplan
While the song told us that Jack Charlton always ‘put um under pressure’, Mick McCarthy’s recollection of the dying minutes of that game when nothing could separate the sides was slightly different, with the former Irish captain telling how he came to a mutually beneficial agreement with his Dutch counterpart.
We’d had a ding donger for eighty, eighty five minutes and I just pulled (Denmark captain Ruud Guilt)..and I’d asked the score – England were winning 1-0 against Egypt. I said us three are going through, so I said if you wanna carry on we might beat you, you might beat us but 1-1 gets us all through and we’re both going through, so I said you just keep the ball and we keep it and he said ‘alright’.
We’d have the ball at the back and pass it around and then pass it to them, but as we kept kicking it up to our two centre forwards our two kept chasing out, so he came to me and he said ‘you know we’ve got this agreement that we’re gonna down tools or whatever, he said do you mind telling your two fucking centre forwards’.
It’d been a real ding-donger. It sounds awful, but it was only three or four minutes and extra time.
Speaking about the incident on the Undr The Cosh podcast, however, McCarthy revealed how the referee came very close to putting a stop to the antics when he copped what was going on.
Fortunately for Ireland and the 1990 World Cup, a quick one-liner from the Barnsley-born Irish man disarmed the French man in the middle and both Ireland and the Netherlands progressed through the group.
We’re having about six or seven passes at the back, and they’re having it, it seems like forever but its not and we’d boot it up to them and they’d pass it around, and we’re just playing the last few minutes out and the referee was French, he’d refereed me in Lyon.
He called us both together me and Ruud Guilt, he says ‘you guys come on’, he’d seen what was happening and said ‘you’ve got to play football’.
I said ‘do me a favour, this is the most football we’ve played in fucking years, we made about eight passes’. He just laughed at me, but it sounded like it’s gone on forever but it was just the last two or three minutes, four minutes maybe and then just injury time to play.
While for Mick McCarthy and Ireland it all ended well, what his Dutch counterpart may not have known is that a win over Jack Charlton’s men would’ve seen them seeded against Romania.
Instead, with nothing able to separate the sides names were pulled from a hat and Ireland received the honour of taking on Romania, a game they won on penalties in the last 16, while The Netherlands were left facing a rampant West German team that would knock them out.
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