Séamus Coleman is absent from the Republic of Ireland squad for the upcoming friendlies against Senegal and Luxembourg. Nobody has stated with any certainty if the 36-year-old’s playing career is over.
Everton manager David Moyes is adamant his captain will be contracted to the club next season. In what capacity, however, remains unclear as Coleman has struggled with injuries for several years.
Jake O’Brien is the next man up. The Ireland skipper’s unavailability provided an opportunity for O’Brien to establish himself as a Premier League right-back.
“Séamus is a huge part of the club at Everton, everyone knows that, he’s highly respected – what he’s going to do next July I don’t know,” said O’Brien.
“He can do what he wants. If he wants to be a coach or a player, either one he wants to be, but I think it’s important we keep him at the club, he’s at the heart of everything.
“He was only caretaker manager for a week [in January] but it was great. He’s like that all the time, always driving standards in training, he was no different as caretaker.”
O’Brien rolled the best and worst season of his career into the past 12 months. Everton paid Lyon €19.5 million for the 24-year-old last summer only for Sean Dyche to barely notice.
Dyche used the 6ft 6in defender twice off the bench as The Toffees annual flirtation with relegation forced a managerial change in January.
Moyes returned to Goodison Park and immediately transformed O’Brien into a right-back, mainly to due to the unavailability of Coleman.
In 12 straight Premier League starts at full-back, the Cork man showed his distribution skills, earning a recall to Heimir Hallgrímsson’s international squad, where he forced his way into the team against Bulgaria in March, at centre-back alongside Nathan Collins.
“Six months back I was in a different place, I wasn’t where I thought I’d be when I came to Everton,” he admitted. “I worked hard every day in training. It happens in football, sometimes managers favour you and others don’t, a lot can happen in six months.
“I think when [Moyes] came in, he just knew the club really well and what worked for the club and I think he just got to know the players really well and what works for the team. He didn’t come in and try to change too much all of a sudden. He was very open-minded when you were speaking to him and I’m grateful that he’s given me a chance so everyone knows that he knows what he is doing and that has shown in the last six months with how we finished strongly in the season.”
Matt Doherty has the Ireland right-back role under wraps for the time being, but it was instructive to see Hallgrímsson go with O’Brien ahead of another established Premier League performer in Dara O’Shea.
Now that O’Shea, Celtic’s Liam Scales and O’Brien all reported for training on Monday morning, the Ireland manager’s pecking order will be revealed on Friday against Senegal at the Aviva Stadium.
The centre-half stocks are so plentiful that Hallgrímsson has experimented with Collins as a holding midfielder alongside Josh Cullen. Last year, for 45 minutes at Wembley, it worked. Then Scales was sent off for a second yellow card and England scored five goals.
“It’s always been a strong position with the Irish team, we’ve always had good defenders,” said O’Brien after training in Abbotstown. “As a player you always have to be confident you can come in and stake your place, we have good players in that position so it’s up to the manager at the end of the day.”
Despite the unavailability of former Liverpool star Sadio Mané, Senegal are ranked 19th in the world – to Ireland’s 60th – for good reason. O’Brien knows all about the individual quality of their Everton duo Idrissa Gueye and Iliman Ndiaye.
“The two lads are obviously really good players who have had really good seasons in the Premier League. If you look at the overall squad, they have very prolific players and I think it’s good for us to come up against these teams and prepare for the World Cup.”
In that sense, it is a useful fixture. In reality, Hallgrímsson will use the game to settle upon the starting XI that can beat Hungary in the opening World Cup qualifier at the Aviva Stadium on September 6th. Three days later Ireland return to Yerevan to face an Armenia side that beat them 1-0 in 2022.
“We all feel we are good enough to be at the World Cup,” said O’Brien. “This is a different type of opposition to what we are used to but it’s important we play these types of teams and know that we’re good enough to go toe to toe with them.”
