David Wylie explores what lies ahead for Northern Ireland

Quitting the international game to re­turn to club management is in vogue. If speculation is to be believed, Sven-Göran Eriksson is considering the lure of Abramovich’s millions at Chelsea. Meanwhile, emphasising the worlds between them, Sammy McIlroy has resigned from the Northern Ireland post to become the boss of Stockport County. Eriksson has just delivered qualification. Sammy Mac, on the other hand, has pre­sided over the worst spell in his country’s footballing history. Yet amaz­ingly, he wasn’t sacked; indeed the opposite. Believe it or not, only a short time before leading NI to a dismal three points, no wins and no goals from our latest campaign, Mc­Ilroy signed a new two-year deal.

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Who will replace Sven?

England’s qualification for Euro 2004, in all probability delaying the mooted departure of Sven-Göran Eriksson to Stamford Bridge until next summer at the earliest, reduces the urgency of some particularly troubling questions without diminishing their importance: where are all the great English managers? Or even half-decent ones, especially among those with international playing experience? Was there something in the water at Spain 82, Mexico 86 and Italia 90 that en­­sured an entire generation would strug­­gle to achieve mediocrity?

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Wednesday 1 “If you defend badly you deserve everything that happens to you,” growls Sir Alex as Man Utd concede two goals in three minutes in a 2-1 defeat at Stuttgart. After Chelsea’s 2-0 home defeat to Besiktas Claudio Ranieri defends his decision to make five changes from last weekend’s team: “It is easy to second-guess after the match but I did what I thought was right.” Rangers concede a late equaliser to draw 1-1 at Panathinaikos.

Thursday 2 “We like to think we are a caring and consulting club,” says Leeds chairman Prof John McKenzie, who decides not to sack Peter Reid after consulting with fan groups and shareholders. An Arsenal tenancy at Wembley could still happen after the board admit at their AGM to being £200 million short of the money needed for the new stadium at Ashburton Grove.

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Mike Woitalla explores where it all went wrong

One must be careful, when sending out emails, not to hit the wrong button. Take a girls’ soccer coach in Wisconsin. This man claims he in­tended to send the pornographic video of himself to his girlfriend. Instead, the video arrived at the family email address of one of his teenage players and was opened by the girl’s mother. He ain’t coaching anymore. In April 2002, an official of the Women’s United Soccer Assoc­iation (WUSA) made an electronic error of far less egregious proportions. It did, however, shed some light on women’s soccer in the US.

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Dear WSC
At the time of writing it is Thurs­day, September 11, 2003. Last night I along with 8,815 others ventured to Windsor Park, safe in the knowledge we could finally put to rest the 11-game goal drought. After all, we only lost 1-0 away to Armenia and we hit the post and crossbar and we mis­sed a few chances. Two hours later we had lost 1-0 again and we hit the crossbar and hit the post and missed a few chances. The media has generally chuckled at our plight, and who could blame them. BBC Northern Ireland is running a phone poll on whether or not we should scrap the Northern Ireland football team in favour of an All-Ireland -Team. This in itself is a quite ludicrous, deliberately contentious and politically loaded question from a supposedly public service broadcaster. I don’t recall a similar poll in favour of a British and Irish Lions team poll when the Irish rugby team lost to Argentina in a World Cup game. A plus point about the goal drought is that for the first time in years what little publicity we have received hasn’t been about problems with sectarianism and the national team. To an outsider it probably seems that Northern Ireland home games are a seething cauldron of bigotry and hatred.In fact, anyone attending a game without preconceived ideas would be surprised at how good the atmosphere is given the terrible ground, poorly performing team and crowd size. We are now just known as being useless, not useless bigots. I hope one day soon to look back and laugh about when we couldn’t score as Andy Smith nods another past a hapless Barthez on our way to automatic qualification for the World Cup in Germany…
Jim Lockhart, Banbridge, Co Down

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