Ireland 1990 marked the Coppa Italia for going to the quarterfinals without a win

When asked what his goal would be if he were Ireland’s manager, Jack Charlton responded straight away, as if he were still the lackluster center back for England’s 1966 world champions.

“I’m going to put this team on the football map.”

It sounded like bravado. Nor did he take what he said seriously. He was fishing in the Middlesbrough region, in the north of the country, in 1986, when a relative met him to break the news: he had been hired.

If the 1990 World Cup is considered one of the most truncated and defensive games in the history of the tournament, in part the credit (or blame, depending on your point of view) goes to John “Jack” Charlton.

No team before or after the one he led has piled up so many draws and come so close to being world champion without winning a single match. With four draws, Ireland reached the quarter-finals of the tournament, against Italy, the hosts. Lost 1-0 in a play in which goalkeeper Pat Bonner slipped and left the goal open for Salvatore Schillaci to score.

“I really wanted to see how the Italians would face Packie [Bonner] in a penalty shootout”, dreamed defender Paul McGrath.

With football that Irish journalist Eamon Dunphy called “Stone Age”, Charlton got what he promised, for better or for worse. He transformed Ireland and placed it in World Cup history. Maybe not for the right reasons for football lovers, but it did.

It is difficult for anyone to have taken such pragmatism to its ultimate consequences.

“I have to admit that it wasn’t pretty. But it was efficient”, acknowledges Nial Quinn, striker of that team.

Jack Charlton’s Ireland has taken the boom and the helms for attacking to a new level. The instruction for sides and defenders, when receiving the ball, was to send it immediately to the attack. Preferably from above. It was the tactic that in the UK was called “route one”, the opposite of the strategy of always having possession and controlling the game with touches.

It worked out. At Euro 1988 (at a time when only eight teams qualified for the tournament), Ireland defeated England, in one of the most memorable results in their history, and came within seven minutes of going to the semi-finals, eliminating the Netherlands, who then would be champion.

But compared to what it would show at the World Cup in Italy, continental competition football would look like Guardiola’s Barcelona. In 1990, pragmatism reached such a point that French referee Michel Vautrot called midfielder Kevin Moran and Dutchman Ronald Koeman to ask that the two teams please play football and stop just exchanging passes in the back field.

Ireland debuted with a 1-1 draw with England. Then it was 0-0 with Egypt. A 1-1 draw with the Netherlands left the two tied by all criteria for second place. FIFA had to do a lottery. Charlton’s team got the better of it and took second place. The Netherlands, in third.

The draw was the closest thing to a victory that Ireland has experienced at the World Cup. Luck put her to face Romania in the round of 16. After 120 minutes of 0-0, they took the spot 5-4 on penalties.

Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets of the country to celebrate the historic classification. The Irish team, which had never participated in the World Cup, was in the quarter-finals. The three-time champion Brazil, defeated by Argentina in the round of 16, did not.

“Looking at the matches nowadays, it was horrible football. But back then, nobody paid attention to it. Ireland were in the quarter-finals of the World Cup, and that was unbelievable. Jack Charlton was the most popular figure in the country.” wrote journalist Declan Lynch in his book “Days of Heaven: Italia 90 and the Charlton Years” (“Days of Paradise: Italy 90 and the Charlton Years”, not published in Brazil).

The performance in Italy was also the rebirth of Jack Charlton. Despite being champion in 1966, he was the much less talented brother of Bobby Charlton, the greatest English player of all time. He became known as a member of a Leeds United team that was multi-champion, but abused violence on the field. Shortly before taking over the national team, he had resigned from the command of Newcastle, his favorite team.

Four years later, in 1994, in the United States, he would lead Ireland once again to the knockout stage of the Cup. The team was eliminated in the round of 16 by the Netherlands, in another game that was marked by the failure of goalkeeper Pat Bonner. But along the way, he achieved what is the most remembered result in Irish football: the 1-0 victory over Italy at the old Giant Stadium in New Jersey, packed with Irish people.

“It may sound crazy to say this, but as time went on, the game against Italy would get better and better for us. I believe there would be a real chance for us to win”, says Kevin Moran, about the duel at the Olympic stadium in Rome, in 1990.

After the elimination, the entire squad and coaching staff went to the Vatican for an audience with Pope John Paul II.

The memory that remained for neutral fans may have been bad football and draws. For the Irish who took to the streets to celebrate, it was much more than that.

Lynch tells the story, in “Days of Heaven”, of the woman who, in labor, tried to overcome the traffic and crowded streets in Dublin to reach the maternity hospital. With her husband at the wheel, she was crying in pain. With the car stopped, a policeman approached her to see what was happening and saw her in tears.

“Oh my lady. I understand you. As soon as the game ended, I also shed some tears.”