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11th Jun 2015

11 reasons Ireland will never, ever forget Italia ’90

Was it the best summer in the nation's history?

Tony Cuddihy

We’re all (still) a part of Jackie’s Army.

To start this article like a bad coming-of-age teen drama, I was never the same after that glorious summer.

When you’re 11-years-old, obsessed with football and your country has just qualified for its first ever World Cup Finals, it’s not the kind of thing you forget (even after the onset of male pattern baldness).

In no particular order, the best bits of Italia ’90…

Put ‘Em Under Pressure

Mick McCarthy playing the drums. Tony Cascarino acting the maggot. Andy Townsend’s guitar skills. What wasn’t to love?

It was the golden era in Irish football

Steve Staunton, Ray Houghton and Ronnie Whelan had just won the league with Liverpool, while we also had players of the calibre of Kevin Moran, Andy Townsend, Packie Bonner and the great Paul McGrath.

Before the Premier League-era, Irish players had a far greater edge in terms of the English game and our squad was comparable to the best Bobby Robson could come up with. Those really were the days.

The Orbis sticker folder

You had to have one. Had to. If you missed an issue you were screwed, and many was the playground swap when you had six Gary Linekers but no sign of a Fernando Hierro.

The Jack Charlton school of economics – it was ‘the start of the Celtic Tiger’

It’s a nice thought but Italia ’90 did not give birth to the Lucky Leopard. The skinny lattés, cocaine parties and free gym memberships wouldn’t actually start for another five years but if people want to believe Jack Charlton is responsible for the era of the Superpub, let them have at it.

Niall Quinn became a national treasure

Only 23 years-old when the tournament took place, Niall Quinn had just moved to Manchester City from Arsenal, where he had been used only sparingly by George Graham.

On the plane to Italy he was nothing more than back-up to Tony Cascarino, but was chosen ahead of everyone’s favourite non-Irish Irishman to start against the Netherlands and kept us in the tournament with this equaliser.

Packie Bonner. Legend.

We sat down with the great man last year.

Bonner’s save is used in every single Irish sporting montage

Poor Timofte, said no Irish person ever.

https://youtu.be/q9aGzU3XO_o

Eamon Dunphy’s infamous strop

“I felt embarrassed for soccer. Embarrassed for the country. Embarrassed for all the good players, for our great tradition in soccer. This has nothing to do with the players that played today. That’s a good side. I feel embarrassed and ashamed at that performance.”

Eamon had tore off his shirt, beat his chest, sacrificed three of the production staff with a single pen and flown to face down Jack Charlton in a scene from The Good, The Bad and The Former Millwall Reserve.

Only an Irish team would go and see the Pope when they were meant to be training

His Holiness took a bit of a shine to kit-man Charlie O’Leary, by all accounts.

ThePope

It spawned one of the greatest novels about modern Ireland you’ll ever read

The Commitments was good, The Snapper was great but The Van was an absolute classic as Roddy Doyle wrote about two middle-aged friends buying a chip van and going into business, with Italia ’90 as a backdrop.

TheVan

It was the best street party in Irish history (until recently)