19 August 2020, Szusza Ferenc Stadion, Budapest, Hungary.
NK Celje 2-0 Dundalk FC. 90+5’. Free kick to the Slovenians in a dangerous area.
“Rogers with a save, a double save! …and it’s put into the back of the net. Dangovic the substitute makes it 3-0, that really just adds insult to injury for Dundalk….”
A bad night for the Town. Indeed, it was a bad week for the Town. Vinny Perth was dismissed from his position as manager in the wake of the result, after delivering a league title the season before, and having John Sheridan finally figure out what his name was the week before. Nothing gets the league here going like a good scandal, and almost immediately after Perth had been wished the best in his future endeavours, the inside story began doing its rounds as it always does.
The story goes that Vinny Perth was ostensibly sacked for having the temerity to pick his own team for the match against Celje, rather than follow the wishes of American venture capitalist Bill Hulsizer, owner of the club. All of a sudden, one story started to follow another, and none of them made pretty reading for the men beside the border. Josh Gatt, while having decent credentials on paper including 2 senior caps for the USMNT, was signed off the back of an ESPN write-up on his time at Altach in Austria (As an aside Bill, if you’re reading this, you’d be getting the steal of the century if you bought Danny Mandroiu for just 1 million euros of that Europa League money. Act fast!).
It got worse. Speculation was rife about who would be the next Dundalk manager to try and fill the void in the dugout left by Stephen Kenny. Bohemians manager Keith Long’s name came up, as it did when Kenny left for Ireland. The rest of the league looked on with interest – Dundalk are a team with the pedigree and the means to make a big impact with such a choice. An impact is certainly what they made. After a short search, Dundalk decided to look abroad for their new manager and came up with a name. The name was Filippo Giovagnoli.
Who???
You could hear the laughter from Tallaght already. Dundalk had gotten rid of their league winning manager – himself following up on one of the greatest managers ever seen in Ireland – and replaced him with a man whose previous highest level of experience was running summer camps for children in New York for AC Milan. There would be a genuine debate to be had around whether this was more surprising to Dundalk fans or Giovagnoli himself, who immediately fell prey to another LOI maxim; that WhatsApp messages find their way out in the open very quickly. Giovagnoli described his appointment as ‘crazy, but true’, the task ahead of him as a ‘kamikaze mission’ and asked his friends to wish him luck. Not exactly the confidence you want from the man calling the shots in your dugout.
How times change, though. As I write this, Giovagnoli has become only the third manager to guide an Irish team through to the group stages of the Europa League. The previous two ended up managing their national teams within four years of the accomplishment, so Roberto Mancini may start to anxiously look over his shoulder soon. Dundalk will play Arsenal, an Irish team has once again entered the rarefied air of mixing it up with the mighty Premier League elite in European competition. While this is only good for Dundalk, only a fan of the Greatest League in the World with a heart of stone wouldn’t find it within themselves to be just a little bit happy for the summer camp coach who shocked the nation and is living a dream.
It does bear repeating though – this is only good for Dundalk. Three million euros in prize money going to Oriel Park will not make Finn Harps a better team, nor will it be warmly received in Tallaght, Dalymount, Turner’s Cross, the Brandywell, or anywhere else that looks at the bank balance of the Boys in Green Diesel. The converse also applies. The appointment of Giovagnoli was met with laughter from the rest of the league, even though he did have the last laugh. It doesn’t affect the squad and community-building efforts at Bohs, it doesn’t affect the Roadstone production line or Jack Byrne’s performances at Rovers, and it doesn’t affect the support and fundraising efforts seen at Sligo this season, to name examples. To sum up, it does not define the work done by the ten teams in the league.
Across the water, transfer deadline day is on Monday. The biggest story by far of the summer has been the farcical inability of Manchester United to conclude a deal for Jadon Sancho (and rest assured, I’ll be covering this once the window slams shut) and the amateurish nature of their boardroom. If I was to argue on this blog, in the pub, or in work that this is actually bad for Liverpool, as it lowers the reputation of the league and makes them look amateurish by association, and that really those fans should hope that United get Sancho to raise the prestige of the league, the howls of laughter would probably carry across the Irish Sea into the Kop for the next game. And rightfully so – hoping your hated rivals strengthen so that you look good alongside them is a plainly ridiculous suggestion. However, it is an argument frequently applied to an Irish context.
Media coverage of what could be termed a philosophical debate about what is ‘good’ for the League of Ireland has often resembled a conservative think-tank critically analysing how a third world country is an undesirable candidate to receive basic aid packages. We shouldn’t get any money, because it’ll just be squandered on overpaid bad players. However, we should be beating teams that spend several times the amount we ask for – let alone have – as a matter of course, or it will show that ‘the standard isn’t good enough’.
We should make an effort to accommodate those that consider it a pub league lest we be ‘exclusionary’ – despite the fact that most of us do support the very same Premier League teams we’re alleged to hate and look down upon – but should also constantly be mindful of not throwing up the absurdities that a league campaign tends to. Bohs beating UCD 10-1 was ‘bad for the league’ and full media articles and podcasts were devoted to the reputational damage caused by the result. Seemingly, it was the extra goal apiece for Bohs and UCD that really set it apart from Southampton 0-9 Leicester.
Pippo Giovagnoli’s ‘kamikaze mission’ will mean he probably never has to buy a pint in the Town again. However, this too was ‘bad for the league’, and covered as such, as it feeds into the ‘pub league’ narrative. He doesn’t even have his UEFA coaching badges. ‘Neither does Andrea Pirlo’ was a response seen this week, but this fails to recognise that Paddy Power tweeted that he has many leather-bound books. So that’s different. In any event, we’ll only have to watch Juve play Inter if Sheffield United v Brighton isn’t on at the same time, so not to worry.
Giovagnoli was bad for the league’s image, there’s no doubt about that. However, if you go up to Dundalk this week, ask them if they’re concerned about that. Furthermore, ask yourself if they should be. Giovagnoli was good for Dundalk in the end. That’s all that matters. That’s all that should ever matter.
We should never ask our teams to consider the respectability of the league as a whole in taking courses of action that will only benefit or hinder them. In doing so, we take away their agency. We wouldn’t send a relay team tied together to run the 100 metre dash at the Olympics, just the same as we shouldn’t make our teams run together to improve themselves individually. We should be giving them the tools and the support to improve themselves. Measuring the league against our neighbours in a quest for respectability, who consider a league that provided two Champions League semi-finalists in the year just gone a ‘farmers league’ will always be a fruitless endeavour. In the end, if it was good enough advice for Pippo Giovagnoli’s job interview, it is good enough advice for the league – don’t worry about the rest, sometimes it’s best to just be yourself.
Adjudged Offside 