As the qualifying rounds for both Champions League and Europa League are now complete, this seems a good time to review events. What happens in either competition from now on is of little consequence to Glentoran, or any other Irish League club; but the events of early July to late August are of huge meaning, and their outcomes deserve detailed review.
First of all, let’s establish why that is. Why Europe matters, or why Europe should matter, to a club like Glentoran. To the pragmatist the answer is money – the prize money available from even first round elimination dwarfs anything on offer domestically, while successful progression through just one round in either competition would increase our annual revenue substantially. To make absolutely clear, for the club’s creditors, in terms of prize money alone, winning a single European tie is equal to winning two Irish League championships or going on a 1980s-style Irish Cup winning run. Considering the fiscally perilous situation of the club at this time, we have no choice but to be pragmatists. And yet some of us also remain romantics, and for our dwindling number Europe tempts us with an idyll that the Irish League alone cannot give. Some Oval regulars personally remember the European conquests of the early 60s to early 80s – a two decade span upon which our heritage was built and songs were written. Many others, myself included, arrived soon enough afterwards to hear the stories first-hand and grow-up as Glentoran supporters believing that fighting our corner in Europe, and landing the occasional blow, was the norm to be expected.
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| Glentoran v Rangers programme, 1966. A famous night at the Oval when 35,000 saw a 1-1 draw. |
And yet it’s clear to all that in the last decade, if not even earlier, the club has taken the decision to give up on Europe. To cease to try, to surrender, to happily conform to our bestowed role as Europe’s cannon fodder. This may never have been a conscious decision. It may never have been discussed in the boardroom or set out in a strategy that was issued to coaching staff, players and supporters. And yet it is unquestionably with this full understanding that we now proceed, year after year. Both the club and its supporters still seem to recognise the worth of European qualification, but our appetite or expectation does not extend to being competitive once we have secured our place in the draw. In short, we know the price of qualification but have lost the comprehension of its value.
Of course, this means something deeper than merely failure in one of the numerous annual competitions in which we take part. It means we’ve given up on ourselves. It means we’ve stopped trying to move forward as a club. It means we’ve stepped out of the rat race that is constantly driving up standards elsewhere in the continent. We’re no longer interested in measuring ourselves against any club from outside the six counties of Northern Ireland. We have decided that our only ambition, our only reason for existence, is to be one percent better than Linfield (and you could even argue that of late we’ve given up on that too) and five percent better than Portadown, Cliftonville and Crusaders. This malaise also explains our attitude to the Setanta Cup where, 2008 excepted, we have even displayed a lack of interest in competing against clubs from 100 miles down the road. Why bother with something difficult when we can return to the Irish League at the weekend, beat Newry City as usual, and go back to feeling good about ourselves? Being one of the ‘Big Two’ in, let’s face it, a pretty puny playground, is our comfort zone; being the underdog is not.
A few weeks ago I was channel surfing and came across the latest Shamrock Rovers v Bohemians game. Rovers were just back from their trip to Modena where they were narrowly beaten by Juventus courtesy of a wonderful Del Piero free-kick, and yet the match summariser was talking about how Europe was nothing but a distraction and that this Dublin derby, with points at stake in the chase for the league title, is what really matters. His central argument was that Shamrock Rovers will never win the Europa League but they’ve got a chance of claiming the Airtricity League title this season. What nonsense. Try telling Rovers’ players, supporters or club financial officers that the Juventus fixtures were meaningless. Of course Rovers were never going to win the Europa League, but probably only a quarter of the 48 mega-clubs that enter the group stage and hit our television screens this month have any hope of victory. That’s not the point. The point is to go as far as possible, to show self-respect, and to try and achieve beyond your own limitations, or certainly beyond the expectations that others have for you. It’s one of the beauties of the inherent inequalities of world football that an early round giant killing (or even just early round victory) for one club can have the same significance as ultimate triumph for another. It’s how Glentoran fans can get as much personal satisfaction from following our team as Manchester United fans do from theirs.
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| Juventus v Shamrock Rovers, 2010. The type of game that some would have us believe is now impossible. |
Some thought that Allianssi in 2004 would provide a watershed for Glentoran. This was the tie that blew the myths that ‘foreign’ automatically means ‘better’, that we could never get a result away from home, that the words ‘full time professional’ somehow bestow the opposition with magical powers. Surely now the club would get hooked on the prize money, the players would start believing, and we as supporters would demand regular wins? Sadly not. Instead, the Allianssi win has turned out to be nothing more than a statistical blip and our results since have actually declined further.
The main Glentoran internet forum has been lively with discussion on this and linked topics since early summer. The defeatists within our number, dressed up as realists, yet vastly overestimating the realities in other European footballing backwaters, have been arguing that any small steps we take – like resuming pre-season training earlier, playing more warm-up games and ensuring our full squad is available for selection – will be fruitless as we will always come up against more sophisticated and technically superior opposition. They believe that entering European games with better physical fitness would matter for nothing against teams still able to pass the ball quicker than our players can run. And further, they believe that Europe just comes too early now for us to take it seriously – it’s unfair for us to expect too much from part-time players in terms of June training and July competitive games. And so let’s look at the facts based on what happened in the qualifying rounds this season. And, especially, let’s see if we can learn anything that will influence our approach, and our attitude, for next season.
We know what happened to our own club – we were beaten comfortably by a mid-table Icelandic side. In case you didn’t know, Iceland is an even more remote island than our own and has a population a fifth of that of Northern Ireland. The nation is also bankrupt and football isn’t high on its agenda right now. Yet the tie was over after 32 minutes of the first leg when we found ourselves 2-0 behind. Incidentally, a KR supporter reported his opinion on the internet that, based on our performance in Reykjavik, we are the worst European team ever to have visited Iceland (admittedly, there could be an element of exaggeration produced by post-win cockiness here). Ironically, following the Belfast leg, many of our supporters said the same thing about KR. The difference was, they won 5-2.
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| Gary Hamilton v KR Reykjavik, 2010 |
Northern Ireland
Linfield has a confused relationship with European competition. Like ourselves, they can and do point to past (and rapidly fading) glories, and they have a small bunch of supporters that travels abroad to away games each year. Yet I get the clear feeling that David Jeffrey, and therefore his players, take the experience of participation much more seriously than the club hierarchy does. Both Jeffrey and the players seem to enjoy testing themselves against bigger clubs and full-time players, for example Rosenborg’s Anthony Annan who had played for Ghana in the World Cup in June. They go into games with both a self-belief and a tactical organisation superior to our own. And as a result, they’ve had more success than us over the last decade, albeit often in the form of honourable damage limitation against mighty clubs like Dinamo Zagreb, or positive results in home fixtures even if the overall tie is lost. This year’s performances in the Champions League second qualifying round against Rosenborg fitted that mould. A determined 0-0 at Windsor Park followed by an ‘immensely proud of my players’ 2-0 defeat in Norway. I’m realistic in my expectations in Europe and it has to be recognised that anything greater than this would have been a major upset, however I reluctantly believe that in the same circumstances the Glens would have settled for much, much less (as we did in the same competition last season when we tried to cover-up our humiliating 10-0 defeat to Maccabi Haifa by overstating the mastery of the opponents, whose true capabilities were shown to the world once they moved beyond the qualifiers). To prepare for the Rosenborg games, Linfield resumed pre-season training on 21st June for a first leg game 23 days later, which was nearly twice the training time allocated by the Glens. Although our friendly game time was disappointingly comparable – both clubs playing only a single match versus TNS and some in-house games during training.
Surprisingly, Portadown and Cliftonville were this season’s local success stories. Perhaps, being less frequent participants, they weren’t jaded by the routine negativity that surrounds our own annual European operations. Portadown played shrewdly to draw at home and win away to Skonto Riga – notably a superior club to the Latvian side we recently went out to – before losing at Shamrock Park to Qarabag and then gaining another good away result with a scoring draw in Azerbaijan. Cliftonville won at home and drew away to Cibalia of Croatia – an excellent achievement considering the strength of top Croatian football – before losing home and away with honours to famous CSKA Sofia. Both clubs received major boosts to coffers, morale, support and reputations.
Wales
The New Saints (TNS) led the charge this year; in fact, by opening themselves up to good fortune by achieving a single convincing win at home to Bohemians, they launched themselves on a six game run. When was the last time the Glens played six games in Europe in the one season? 1973-74. Winning 4-1 on aggregate against Bohemians – a fixture they were seeded to lose – gave them two glamour games against Anderlecht in the third qualifying round through which, while losing 5-1, they progressed to the play-offs of the Europa League before being eliminated 5-2 by CSKA Sofia. This shows the quirks of the system – by winning the Welsh league and progressing through a single round, TNS got six games and within a tie of reaching the Europa League group stages. Important lesson – good things happen to clubs that make themselves available to these possibilities. How did TNS achieve this? Well, they took Europe seriously, as demonstrated by returned to pre-season training on 1st June, six weeks before their first competitive game, and during this period they played a round robin tournament against the other Welsh qualifiers, in addition to a trip to the Oval. They put in the work and they got the rewards. There’s another lesson here. We often complain that there is no suitable opposition for us to face in warm-up games pre-Europe. TNS, and the other Welsh clubs, have shown that it’s as simple as picking up the phone to clubs next door.
In the Europa League, there was less, but still some, success. Llanelli were narrowly defeated 5-4 after extra time by Tauras of Lithuania and Port Talbot lost heavily to TPS of Finland. However, Bangor City salvaged some pride. An away draw in Finland and a home 2-1 victory against Honka meant that they progressed to the third qualifying round and glitzy, not forgetting lucrative, ties against Maritimo of Portugal, which they eventually lost 10-3 on aggregate.
Republic of Ireland
The most obvious point about the preparation of clubs from the RoI is their domestic summer football structure, meaning that Europe comes mid-season rather than at the very beginning. The significance of this cannot be ignored; although I’m not convinced that this advantage cannot be eliminated through better preparation on our own part (see TNS above), without having to overhaul the Irish League footballing calendar. Afterall, the change to summer football in the Republic had nothing to do with Europe, but rather was an attempt to attract bigger crowds to domestic games, and on this it, as a lone factor, has been a failure. But I’m straying off topic. The point is that all RoI clubs had played plenty of competitive games prior to their European fixtures and so issues of pre-season training dates and friendly fixtures do not apply to them. We can therefore assume that, aside from the regular pattern of mid-season injuries and fatigue, their teams entered the European fixtures at the height of their fitness and tactical refinement.
Bohemians screwed up, and surely they know it. They were heavy favourites to progress after being drawn with TNS in the Champions League second qualifying round. Afterall, RoI clubs now fancy their chances in Europe against Scottish clubs, never mind Welsh. They duly won their home leg 1-0 before mysteriously losing 4-0 in Oswestry.
In the Europa League first qualifying round, Dundalk were seeded and yet made heavy work of beating Grevenmacher of Luxemburg 5-4 on aggregate. They then lost convincingly against Levski of Bulgaria. In the second qualifying round, Shamrock Rovers showed us how to play against Israelis. After a 1-1 draw in Tallaght against Bnei Yehuda they went to Tel Aviv and won 1-0, thereby earning themselves a draw with Juventus in the next round. Everyone thought the days of facing clubs like Juventus in Europe were gone forever, but new European formats, and some determination, show that this simply isn’t the case. They lost 3-0 on aggregate and yet enjoyed a notable and proud event in their history, much like our own tussle with the Old Lady in 1977. Sporting Fingal – the new ‘community-based’ club from north of Dublin – played their first ever European games this summer and were fortunate to draw Maritimo of Portugal. On hearing the draw, manager Liam Buckley said “...we’ve waited a long time since winning the FAI Ford Cup last November to participate in European competition and we’ll approach this tie with the aim of winning it and securing a place in the third round.” Can you ever imagine a Glentoran manager, other than John Colrain, saying something like this, even when we’ve been paired with much more lowly opposition? And yet here it is, from a club only founded in 2007, with virtually no fans and zero European pedigree. Certainly it was good marketing – hinting that you’re going to put up a fight helps sell tickets – and it also helps establish the club as a serious entity. But more than that, it indicates a self-belief and an ambition that is sadly absent at the Oval. In actual fact, Sporting Fingal didn’t progress, but they can be content with two 3-2 defeats to a club that finished fifth in the Portuguese league in 2009-10.
Summary
So let’s summarise the performance of Northern Irish, Welsh and southern Irish clubs in Europe. The below table is a crude analysis – it doesn’t recognise seedings or luck of the draw, nor does it recognise the increasing difficulty of opposition as the clubs moved through rounds – but it is interesting nonetheless.
These are results from one season only, but a notable outcome is that each league performed roughly equal in terms of ‘points’ won; however, while the league table is never supposed to lie, I’m not sure it does full justice to the RoI clubs considering their stand-out performances such as an away win in Israel and a total of four narrow defeats to top Portuguese and Italian opposition.
Yet, the really significant outcome for Glentoran supporters is, once again, our own club’s underperformance. Linfield, Portadown, Cliftonville, TNS, Llanelli, Bangor City, Bohemians, Dundalk, Sporting Fingal and Shamrock Rovers can all be argued to have had more successful (or for some, less unsuccessful) European campaigns than us. Yet, from the list above, only Linfield, Bohemians and Shamrock Rovers can have any claim to be a club of the size, support, heritage and European experience of Glentoran.
Which begs the questions – how and why do others perform consistently better than us? Why are we content with clubs from countries like Wales and Iceland being superior to us? And do we care enough to do anything about it?
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