Gavin Cooney

HERE’S AN UNTOLD story from the day Heimir Hallgrimsson landed in Ireland. 

With the FAI’s marathon search process finally at an end, Marc Canham decided to check Hallgrimsson and his wife into a city centre AirBnB for their first couple of days in Dublin. A couple of FAI staffers arrived an hour or so ahead of the Hallgrimssons, to check in on their behalf and ensure a warm welcome. 

When they got there, they found a group of Spanish guys who hadn’t checked out on time, and instead were continuing their rager for the night before.

So you can picture the scene: the FAI staffers had to kill the music, kick out the Spaniards, and then frantically clean the place, hurling empty cans and bottles into bin bags and sweeping clean the surfaces of all manner of interesting, er, products. 

They managed to do so in the nick of time.

So in terms of the utterly chaotic somehow turning out to be just fine at the last possible moment, the episode proved an apt metaphor for Ireland’s qualification group. 

Of course if you were to Rip Van Winkle yourself from the Paddy McCarthy press conference in September right up to full-time in Budapest then you’d have assumed Ireland’s progress was the most natural thing in the world. To which the rest of us would say: you should have seen this place before you got here. 

The back-to-back wins over Bulgaria in March – both of which involved coming from behind – bred an oddly insistent kind of serenity in the squad ahead of kick off at home to Hungary in September. 

Hallgrimsson was not hoping to be at the World Cup, but expecting to be there. Hence his many Championship players were left out of the squad for the June friendlies, while he used his limited budget to hire a physical trainer, Pepe Lazaro, to begin building a rapport with players with whom he would be working very closely in America. 

Hallgrimsson meanwhile said his players had overcome their oft-lamented confidence issues, saying they were even looking taller. Such was the profusion of club captains in the squad, a fit Seamus Coleman was omitted from the squad entirely. It was to prove a huge error, though in fairness to Hallgrimsson, it’s not as if the media were instantly demanding answers on Coleman’s whereabouts. 

Assistant coach Paddy McCarthy was meanwhile loosed upon the press room, shaking our hands before blasting us away with the conviction of his belief that the players were on the cusp of “doing something special.” McCarthy was uniquely persuasive: one journalist muttered, “Paddy McCarthy for president” after fetching his dictaphone. 

Alas. 

Ireland found themselves 2-0 down to Hungary by half-time, the inflated air instantly burst. Leading up to the game, Hallgrimsson had shown journalists a presentation of the six principles he has been preaching to his players. 

He wanted his side to be highly-organised; to be the best around at set pieces; to be focused and disciplined; to be the hardest-working team in any given game; to be forward-thinking and fast-attacking; and have a strong team spirit forged by the best characters and leaders possible. 

Ireland got done because of a lack of focus in the early minutes and then lamely conceded from a set piece to be 2-0 in double-quick time. Happily Evan Ferguson – who would almost single-handedly keep Ireland alive in the group before the November madness – scored after half-time to provoke a wild atmosphere in which Roland Sallai lost his head. Ireland’s means of equalising against 10-men were unsophisticated but eventually successful, thanks to Adam Idah. 

Hallgrimsson immediately warned of complacency against Armenia. “It’s just like Iceland when we go to Eurovision: we always think we have the best song, but we never go to the qualifying round”, he said. 

Ireland promptly collected nul points. 

Yerevan was a debacle, as Ireland wasted a promised start by falling to pieces under the first sign of Armenian pressure. Hallgrimsson was visibly shocked at full-time, speaking through a hoarse, chastened whisper, forced to answer questions about his own future. He would tell journalists that we should be measured in our criticism of the players, given how badly they were hurting. 

Hallgrimsson apologies to the Irish fans in Yerevan. Ryan Byrne / INPHO Ryan Byrne / INPHO / INPHO

FAI CEO David Courell gave his own press briefing days later, and was forced to confirm that Hallgrimsson would be allowed to see out the rest of the campaign. The whole enterprise looked utterly doomed, with another qualifying campaign seemingly blowing up on the launchpad. 

Canham said he hired Hallgrimsson for his adaptability, needlessly explaining that Ireland would be facing teams of, above, and beneath their level in the World Cup campaign. The manager then proved that adaptability by chucking out most of what he had been working on. 

Ireland’s system – a 4-4-2 without the ball and a 3-4-2-1 with it – was binned, perhaps because its success hinged on the now-absent Robbie Brady. It was replaced by a more orthodox 5-4-1. 

Ireland started in Lisbon with three players who had been left out of the previous squad, Coleman returning along with Jayson Molumby and Festy Ebosele. A fourth, John Egan, made a late substitute appearance.

Killian Phillips, whose second-half introduction for Josh Cullen in Armenia was a disastrous gamble by Hallgrimsson, was banished. The list of midfielders since picked in squads ahead of Phillips reads: Molumby, Will Smallbone, Conor Coventry, Andrew Moran, Jamie McGrath. 

The Lisbon defeat was a heartbreaker. Ireland offered nothing in attack but defended with a doggedness that had been absent in Yerevan.

Hallgrimsson stuck with the same defensive formula for the must-win home game with Armenia and bored the stadium to tears. As they left for half-time, Ireland had zero shots on target and were booed off. 

In a campaign of unlikely heroes, lest not this history be written without mention of Tigran Barseghyan, whose headbutt on Finn Azaz was the most consequential nod of the match prior to Ferguson’s close-range, headed winner. 

Hallgrimsson showed the first signs of exasperation with the media after the game, commenting gnomically that the media have to decide whether to view the glass as half-full or half-empty, and that they have great power to shape the feeling around the team. Our response was the glass was at best a quarter-full, as it had leaked all over Yerevan. 

Coleman celebrates at full-time in Hungary. Ryan Byrne / INPHO Ryan Byrne / INPHO / INPHO

The omission of Coleman for that game was still a talking point with Hallgrimsson after that game, and he gently chided us for continuing to refer back to that game. To this reporter, it felt like Hallgrimsson was fighting a rearguard action. Given Armenia was this campaign’s graveyard, why did he have such a problem talking about it? 

But Hallgrimsson wasn’t scrambling for answers: he didn’t agree with the premise of the question. 

Hallgrimsson remained utterly convinced his players could first get to Budapest with their fate in their own hands, and then deliver themselves to that fate. Such was his belief in all of this, he wrote his post-Hungary victory speech to his players before the game. 

“I said it you guys in the beginning, I have belief in these guys”, said Hallgrimsson after the Budapest drama was at an end.

“I know you haven’t had it, I know you made fun of me saying it. Hopefully now you see it.” 

Hallgrimsson may have thrown out September’s plans for October, but he retained October’s for November. Ireland retained their defensive solidity again against Portugal, but this time they bolted on a far more effective counter-attacking plan. Crucial to this was Troy Parrott’s return to fitness, along with Chiedozie Ogbene’s revitalisation.

That Ogbene left Ipswich for a Championship relegation battle with Sheffield United for the sake of regular minutes was part of Ireland’s salvation. 

But of course the wildest rescue act of all was played out to the clock in Budapest. Ireland failed under some of their own measures against Hungary on Sunday – conceding from an early set piece being an obvious one – but unlike in previous games, they reacted to their setbacks.

Hallgrimsson’s unflappable outward belief was often at odds with how often he changed his plans and flip-flopped on squad selections, but the sheer conviction of his stance has bled into his players. 

Prior to Hallgrimsson’s reign, the last time Ireland had come from behind to win a competitive game having conceded the first goal was against Kazakhstan in 2013. Under Hallgrimsson, they have done exactly that in four of their last 12 games. 

There has also been a turnaround in the perception of Hallgrimsson’s own position. Prior to these miracle few days, it was assumed his contract would not be renewed, and the FAI would be back on the managerial hunt.

It felt more than coincidental that Damien Duff, who had retained a monastic public silence since leaving Shelbourne, popped up in a lengthy interview with the Irish Independent last Saturday, a chat that was conducted two days before the Portugal game.

Having previously given the impression that he wouldn’t work for the FAI again if they were the last football employer on Earth, Duff’s admission that he “didn’t know” whether he would like to manage Ireland was a significant shift. 

In the full flush of feeling off the back of Budapest, it was hard to envisage Hallgrimsson not steering Ireland through to Euro 2028. It will be the FAI’s job to remove this emotion when they parse the campaign. 

But Hallgrimsson has fashioned Ireland into a side that fulfills his six aforementioned principles and guided them to the World Cup play-offs. 

Just as on the day he arrived: things came together just in time.