What Katie did – and Vera didn’t

 Creating a cohesive team must be a bruising experience.  You’re faced with eleven or fifteen footballers, who wouldn’t be where they are if they weren’t gifted and strong-willed. So naturally when it comes to laying out the strategy for the team, everyone must buy into the strategy otherwise it just won’t work.

Take the Ireland women’s soccer team. The coach, Vera Pauw, looks  very much the part: Dutch, experienced, quietly authoritative. Except that’s not exactly how things worked out in Australia. The Republic of Ireland women’s soccer team played three games, losing the first two and drawing in the last. For all the excited Irish fans, that looks like a poor record. Which is probably why team captain Katie McCabe looked for substitutions half-way through the second half of the Nigeria game and didn’t get them. Vera figured she was the coach, not Katie. Which suggests that Vera hadn’t managed to pull together her team to act as one. No wonder the FAI are doing a bit of soul-searching as to whether they should keep Vera on as coach after her contract expires.

Let’s dump the cotton-wool : the Ireland team had a disastrous World Cup. The scoreless draw in the last game is all that saved them from losing every single game. Does that look like Vera has moulded the Ireland team into a cohesive, intense and above all successful unit? Hardly.

Mind you, there are precedents for a bad start foreshadowing a glittering career as coach. Man United lost six of the first eight games under the management of Alex Ferguson. Then the tide turned and United went on to victory after victory.

Is Vera Pauw Alex Ferguson in disguise? I doubt it. I’ll bet Katie McCabe isn’t the only one in the team ranks who thinks their coach is lacking in ideas. Time maybe to find a coach who can bring the cohesion and energy the team must have if it’s to put the fear of God into their bigger opponents. Tot ziens, Vera – mind the door doesn’t hit your arse.