And so to the Olympic Stadium in Helsinki for the relegation showdown with Finland. More than once in the last couple of weeks I have listened to Ireland fans thinking aloud: “Would it actually be better if we got relegated?”
The pros: worse opposition means a better chance of winning games. Better to reign in League C than serve in League B? The cons: what has happened to us, how have we got to the point where we’ve started to think losing might be good, actually?
As Glenn Whelan said on Virgin last month, we’ve got “too used to losing games”. He was talking about some of the players, but it applies equally to everyone else.
Maybe it’s time to look at this with fresh eyes and ask: have we been too down on the idea of losing?
Ireland have lost the last eight serious games in a row — excluding two wins against Gibraltar — which is the worst run anyone can remember. We can extend it to 10 in a row over the next four days.
On Wednesday at the stadium, Heimir Hallgrímsson hesitated to describe this as a “losing streak” and instead went for “downward spiral”. Oh no, that sounds worse: streaks by definition are limited, spirals can keep on spiralling.
Maybe it’s time to look at this with fresh eyes and ask: have we been too down on the idea of losing? What if — instead of thinking of ourselves as trapped in unpleasant streaks or spirals — we gaze about with our third eye and recognise that we have attained a kind of peace? A place beyond desire, beyond hope, where nothing that happens to our team can hurt us any more.
There is a liberation to this. Expecting nothing, everything is a gift. You enter effortlessly into a state of universal gratitude. “Imagine we scored a goal,” you idly think, and suddenly you catch yourself smiling stupidly. You can get used to anything, including rock bottom. You get to know the terrain, you find the rocks where you can stretch out and get comfortable.
Some Ireland fans, who do not yet understand the art of acceptance, have been going the other way. Watching Ireland lose still makes them feel bad.
During the first two years of Stephen Kenny’s time — at least after they were let back into stadiums — the fans were positive, determinedly so. There was pride and defiance from the most vocal among them, especially as ex-player pundits began to criticise the manager over his flatlining results. That feeling only fizzled out in Kenny’s final few months.
But Kenny came into the job with an existing base of support that was ready and eager to get behind him. Hallgrímsson appeared out of nowhere, without any natural base. The crowd is still uncertain about the reasons to be positive. But you can sense a new sharpness to the negativity.
The fans didn’t seem that angry after the England game — the gap between the sides was too big. The backlash came against Greece. It was no surprise that the crowd booed the final score of 0-2, but they also booed the announcement of Will Smallbone as man of the match and the appearance of Matt Doherty as a 75th-minute sub.
Some would worry about the effect this could have on the players: losing all those games is surely demoralising enough without being abused by your own fans?
Frank Lampard says he was driven on by the memory of being taunted by his fans at West Ham as he was stretchered off with a broken leg at the age of 18
Still, the glorious career of Alex Ferguson reminds us that bullying has its place in the game. Brennan Johnson is in the form of his life after abuse from his supporters prompted him to delete his social media accounts. Frank Lampard says he was driven on by the memory of being taunted by his fans at West Ham as he was stretchered off with a broken leg at the age of 18. For some players, the negative emotions of anger and fear can be powerful energy sources. Maybe a little tough love from the crowd could help jolt this team out of its rut.
The players might privately question whether Ireland fans have earned the right to boo. For the last hour of the match against England, the sell-out crowd sat in silence. It was the same against Greece, only without the initial barrage of noise there was against England. “The fans were very quiet tonight,” Glenn Whelan observed after the Greece game, “but we haven’t given them anything to get off their seats”.
It may be that Whelan just didn’t want to sound like he was hammering the fans as well as the players: best to avoid war on two fronts. But let’s take what he said at face value — essentially, that it’s the team’s job to play well enough to get the fans going.
A rational consumer in the current football market would switch to supporting England. The irrational ones get to experience the hidden joys of being extremely bad
This is a very transactional view of the relationship between team and supporters. People used to talk about fans being a “12th man”. The framing suggests they have the same responsibilities as players to keep believing and keep trying even when the cause seems hopeless.
Imagine a player giving such a tepid performance as the Ireland crowd in the last couple of games. He would be accused of lacking passion, of not wanting it enough, as Doherty was by some fans after Greece. If that player tried to justify himself by saying, “it’s not my fault — the rest of the team just didn’t excite me tonight” he’d never play another game.
Maybe fans really are just customers now — in which case, it’s hard to make sense of what angry Ireland fans are doing. They are buying a notoriously inferior product, then complaining when it doesn’t live up to expectation. Why not show some initiative, shop around? England has a very good team, including lots of famous players from the top European clubs; they win nearly every game they play. A rational consumer in the current football market would switch to supporting them. The irrational ones get to experience the hidden joys of being extremely bad.