The Gaffers: Mick McCarthy, Roy Keane and the Team They Built

by PaulHoward (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2002

  $3.49

  1 September 2001, Lansdowne Road: Ireland vs Holland. In one of the biggest upsets ever seen in football, the Irish team beat the Dutch to gatecrash the World Cup party.

  But for Mick McCarthy and Roy Keane -- the chief architects of this incredible achievement --there was no warm victory embrace. They shook hands, briefly and awkwardly, not looking at each other. It was a moment that defined a footballing era: the manager and his captain behaved like strangers, with no hint of the camaraderie said to exist in the team. That moment foreshadowed the most extraordinary debacle in Irish sporting history, when a bust-up between Keane and McCarthy ended in the manager sending the captain home, his World Cup dream in tatters.

  Paul Howard examines the complex and explosive dynamic between the two men who brought the Irish team to the World Cup, but whose relationship could not endure to the final round. He talks to the players, the management team and the fans, and raises serious questions about the role of the FAI.

  The full story of the Irish team, their World Cup campaign and soccer's greatest controversy.