Ireland face Euros-bound Portugal in their final game of the season tonight.
This is, of course, the origin story of Ronaldo’s big-time career. A jet-lagged Manchester United landed in Lisbon in 2003 to play a friendly game against Sporting, the players grudgingly honouring a club commitment to play the game in return for an understanding that they’d get first dibs on any next-gen stars coming out of the Sporting academy.
“Slightly jet-lagged, but I do remember”, said O’Shea from Ireland’s base in Aveiro yesterday of that day 21 summers ago. Advertisement O'Shea celebrates with Louis Saha and Ronaldo against Birmingham City in 2003. Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo Portugal are plotting for the Euros, and this is their final tune-up before their opening game against Czech Republic tomorrow week. For Ireland it’s another contractually obliged friendly whose usefulness as preparation for the Nations League campaign in September has largely been written off by the FAI’s managerial odyssey.
Hence O’Shea has been prioritising results over experimentation during his interim stint, and it’s hard to see that changing tonight, where the quality of the opponent is such that a result – even a draw – would genuinely improve his case to get the job full-time.
He plays alongside a man almost as old as the earth itself, Pepe, now 41. Nuno Mendes of PSG is a fantastically talented left-back but Joao Cancelo is defensively dodgy at right-back, so Diogo Dalot of Manchester United may be preferred. Fulham’s Joao Palhinha is the ball-winner in midfield.
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