Soccer
Beauty of the best
Mark Jones
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ASK yourself where you were on 6 September 1989. When Liam Brady was substituted after little more than a half hour against West Germany. When Lansdowne Road stopped for a few seconds to absorb the significance. When two opposites of the Irish game collided.
For devotees of elegance, perception and skill, it was as if someone had pointed out a rare flower to Jack Charlton, and he had crushed it underfoot. If Charlton hadn't already been embraced both by the national team's supporters who had travelled wide-eyed to the previous year's European Championship finals, and by a largely benign media, his decision would have been tantamount to heresy.
Because this wasn't just another player walking the lonely walk. This was Liam Brady. A legend at Arsenal when he was in his early 20s, a playmaker who masterminded two Serie A titles when Juventus were the best team in the best league in the world, a beam of light when Ireland were all too often in the dark, a cerebral midfielder who once scored the winning goal against Brazil. When Brady put his left foot on the ball and glanced up, it was as if time stood still.
There were harsh words in the dressing room at half-time.
He told Charlton in no uncertain terms what he thought of him, and Frank Stapleton had to intervene in an effort to defuse the situation, "Hold on, hold on, there's a game to be played here."
Stapleton was right, and the game continued as it inevitably does, but for Brady it was over, and he immediately announced his international retirement. His nemesis would inherit Ireland's new football kingdom.
Tomorrow, Brady, his family and some close friends, will gather at an Italian restaurant near his home in Brighton to mark his 50th birthday. When you're as steeped in the game as he is, and when you run Arsenal's youth development programme, there is no escape from talk of football. But take it that the conversation will also range over his passions for national hunt racing . . . he's one of the owners of Cerium who goes in next month's Arkle Chase at Cheltenham . . . and for golf. Take it as well that Jack Charlton won't be on the agenda.
"No, he won't. Look, if Jack wanted me out of the way, and if he stage-managed the situation by subbing me against West Germany, then it was diabolical. But that's in the past, and anyway, it's important to remember that I played some of my best football for Ireland under Jack. I admired him as a manager, he was decisive, he had a plan, he could handle pressure.
"Admittedly, there was no chemistry between us, and his style of football was completely alien to the way I believe the game should be played. But, no, I don't blame Jack for what he did, because that's just the way he is. I'm not sure he showed anyone any respect, but he got results that hadn't been achieved before. The players were desperate to get to major finals, and he led them."
Looking at Brady now, less intense than the slight, but commanding, figure who could fillet a defence with one stroke of that left foot, and much less intense than the gaunt manager who prowled the touchline at Celtic Park, it's hard to figure him for a rebel. Yet he reminds you that he walked out on Arsenal after just six months.
He had crossed a line with one of the coaches who then kept him back a couple of evenings a week from six to eight o'clock to clean the dressing rooms. So he came home that Christmas in 1971 and vowed not to return. "It wasn't as if I'd been sent back to Dublin because they had doubts over my ability. I'd kind of rebelled against the regime, rebelled against the excessive discipline by this one guy."
Like David O'Leary and Stapleton, and the other Arsenal kids with their dreams, he was homesick, but unlike the other kids, his football education was already more sophisticated.
His great uncle Frank had played for Ireland in the 1920s, his older brothers Pat and Ray were with Millwall and QPR respectively, while another brother Frank played for Shamrock Rovers.
The day before Ray lined out for Ireland against Austria in a European Nations Cup game, he brought Charlie Hurley up to the family home on Glenshesk Road in Whitehall. "It caused a major buzz around the place, all the kids were there knocking on the door. I was about seven or eight, I was awestruck, and that's when I really remember becoming obsessed with the whole thing.
Later, I used to play every Saturday for St Kevin's Boys and then go to watch League of Ireland on a Sunday.
"I was good, and I knew I was good, well, because you just know you are. I was confident, I had the whole thing mapped out in my head. I'd be in the first team at Arsenal when I was 18, and then I'd play for Ireland. Very confident, no doubts about myself."
Later, Ray Treacy would remember looking at the teenager on the morning of his international debut against the Soviet Union in 1974 and thinking that he had lost his bottle. "I was nervous alright, but I think they were good nerves, " Brady says. "I could sense a great belief in John Giles among the players. He'd changed the mindset when he got the manager's job, the inferiority complex had gone. We crucified them. We were aggressive . . . guys like Don Givens and Treacy, not me obviously . . . and we played some great football as well.
They kicked off, the ball came back to John and he passed it straight to me as if to say, 'Go on then, don't be frightened.'
And I wasn't."
That combination of confidence and a rebellious streak served him well as he became the leader of Arsenal's young orchestra. It helped him to acclimatise and then flourish in the demanding arena of the Italian game, and it surfaced again when Charlton grabbed the international team by the scruff of the neck.
During the qualifying campaign for the 1988 European finals, Charlton was trying to impose himself, to build a new side in his image, and Brady quickly sensed he was being picked reluctantly. "He couldn't leave me out because I was playing well, but I probably didn't do myself any favours. I accepted that I had to go along with what he wanted for the most part, yet I didn't toe the line completely. I might pass the ball near the edge of the box and he'd be shouting 'Get the ball up the effing pitch', and I'd pretend I didn't hear. It was that bit of rebellion that wouldn't allow me do it totally his way."
He elbowed a Bulgarian player in the 2-0 win at Lansdowne Road and was sent off.
That appeared to be that.
Brady was 32, Bulgaria would do what they had to do to reach the finals in their last game against Scotland, and Ireland would be out.
On the day of the BulgariaScotland match he was playing golf with Pat Jennings at South Herts outside London, and when they got back to the clubhouse, the barman had this strange look on his face. "You won't believe it, Scotland won 1-0. You're going to the European Championships."
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