OFFICIAL DUNDALK FC MAGAZINE | ISSUE 5 - €3
DUNDALK v SHELBOURNE FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 11TH 2020
KICK-OFF 8PM
FROM THE DRESSING ROOM
BRIAN GARTLAND
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t was important to get the players did wonder about it stage by stage with us to back to winning ways in them. There’s no point beating implement the way he wants Cobh recently. You can around the bush. I saw one of us to play. I like the way he’s never underestimate a win, Filippo’s first interviews and he doing it. He’s precise and clear no matter who you are playing. wasn’t oblivious to that. Getting in what he wants us to do and You have to beat what is in the job was a surprise to him. that’s a great base. We’ve got front of you. The conditions That’s probably a bit of the Irish good players here and people weren’t the best and I think we mentality and it’s probably us don’t become bad players adapted well. We conceded being set in our ways a little overnight. We’ve had a bit of a very few chances and probably bit because of the success bad spell but there should be an could have had a couple more we’ve had and the consistency improvement now. goals if we were a little bit we’ve had here. It’s important We’ve drawn Inter Club from more clinical in the final third. to have open minds and to give Andorra in the second round I thought it was positive and people a chance but that first of the Europa League. It’s not there was a great atmosphere impression is always vital and being disrespectful to say that and feeling about the dressing I thought that set the tone. He the draw is a lot better than room and it’s great was very impressive and any what it could have been. There to have that back. fears or questions we had were some big clubs and big It doesn’t matter were answered. names in there so we can take a who you are playing positive from that. At the same against, you can’t beat time, they’ll feel they could that feeling of winning have got worse teams than IT’S IMPORTANT TO HAVE OPEN together. us. MINDS AND TO GIVE PEOPLE A They have a hell of a lot of CHANCE BUT THAT FIRST IMPRESSION There’s no doubt it internationals and they have IS ALWAYS VITAL AND I THOUGHT has been a strange period a lot of experience on their THAT SET THE TONE. FILIPPO WAS at the club, especially for side. A lot of them, have VERY IMPRESSIVE AND ANY FEARS the lads who have been here played international football OR QUESTIONS WE HAD WERE for the past seven or eight so this won’t be new to them. ANSWERED. years. Things are completely Their seeding is low but different and it has taken a they’ll be no walkovers. It’ll be bit of getting used to but a tough game and more than you have to take the attitude I didn’t know likely a very tactical game. that this is football and anything Filippo was a centre-back. I There’s a positivity about the can happen. We’ve seen that must try and find out what players, the club and all of the with players leaving over the kind of centre-half he was! He’s staff together. The situation years. Ultimately, you just have played in Serie C which is a we ended up in recently wasn’t to get on with it. very high standard. You look at ideal but we just have to get on Filippo and Giuseppe have the likes of Krisztián Adorjan with it now. It has been surreal come in and it’s been very who we rated so highly - who for the past couple of weeks. good. They’ve been positive and came from there. Filippo has We’ve never been in this that confidence is a great base also been around different position before over the past to start off. They had a meeting environments at academies and eight years and we don’t want with us on the first day and different professional clubs so to be in it again. We have to Filippo addressed the players. it’s good to have new ideas and deal with it and make the best He told us what he wanted, how new ways. of it and that’s what the players he wanted us to do it and told We’ve gone back to basics a are doing. We’re in nearly every us the plan. They’re confident, bit in training which is no harm day, we’re working our socks organised, structured and know because the form we’ve been off and we want to finish the what they want. in, we have to build from the season off and do the best we That’s important because bottom up. Filippo is taking can do in every competition.
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COMMUNITY
FYFFES SUMMER CAMPS
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COMMUNITY
FYFFES SUMMER CAMPS
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WELCOME TO
SHELBOURNE FC MEET THE MANAGER
IAN MORRIS (DOB: 27/02/1987)
One of the youngest managers in the league, Ian Morris is now into his second season as boss of Shelbourne. He enjoyed a very successful first year, winning promotion from the first division. This followed a long career in the UK as a player where he started out with Leeds United and moved to Scunthorpe Unitied and had loan spells at Carlisle United and Chesterfield, where he won the League Two title in 2011. Torquay United and Northampton Town were the final clubs that he spent time
21 September 2019; Shelbourne goalkeeper Dean Delany celebrates with supporters following the SSE Airtricity League First Division match between Shelbourne and Limerick FC at Tolka Park in Dublin
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with in England before he made the decision to return home in 2015. St. Patrick’s Athletic were his team of choice and in his sole season in Inchicore he won the EA Sports Cup where Pat’s defeated Limerick in the final. After a spell north of the border with Glenavon, the Leinster Senior Cup followed the year after with Bohemians. At the end of the 2018 season, Morris called time on his playing career at the age of just 31 to take over Shelbourne and two years on, he looks set for a long career in management.
21 September 2019; Shelbourne players celebrate after Shane Farrell scored his side’s third goal during the SSE Airtricity League First Division match between Shelbourne and Limerick FC at Tolka Park in Dublin
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Is it your sense from those individual meetings that the players’ sense and respect you are a good guy? FG: Yes, we’ve had good feedback. How have you assessed Dundalk based on what you have seen on video? FG: I saw a team that is clearly better than the other teams that they were playing. For example, even the last game (against Sligo Rovers) you can see clearly the difference of quality between the teams but sometimes when you lose confidence even the technical and tactical information that is coming to you starts to be confused. Players make a mistake and start to get frustrated so they do too much running or too little running and then there is no tactical connection in the team. This is what was happening, I think, so we are trying to rebuild this kind of confidence but with a tactical and technical understanding of the game and what our objectives are to achieve success. There are a lot of players out of contract at the end of this season. Have you the authority to offer new contracts? FG: This is a really good question. The only way I have to convince them if I’m going to get the job again is through the work. Of course, if I’ll be here everything is in my power to keep them and make them stay with another contract. In my last job, I was developing players. Today, I had a conversation with one of the key players in the team. I’m not going to say who he is but we had a really good conversation and he told me ‘I’m really enjoying this and what we are doing now.’ I told him this is not only about winning games for me, but this is also about developing you. I want him to have a better
contract next year so he can give his family more. I want to see him develop and become a better player. This is my character and this is what we do to develop people. When the players feel you want to help them then they’ll come with you because we are honest and we really want to do it. This is how we got this job. What is your style of football? FG: It’s about principle. More than formations, you can play 4-3-3 and be defensive, it doesn’t matter what the formation, it is about principle. This is what it is about, I don’t want to talk too much about principle, we want to do it first. You’re from Apecchio? FG: Yes. A village. The region is Marche. Are your family back home? FG: Yes, my wife and son still live there. They will wait to see what I do here and maybe we will go back to New York, or maybe not. I don’t know. I don’t want to go back, I want to stay here. You’re probably the most famous person in Apecchio? FG: Probably right now, yes! Who is your team? FG: Juventus. You worked with AC Milan.. FG: I was AC Milan’s camp director in Italy and around the world. They sent me to America and they offered me to stay and I was under contract with a team in Italy but anyway, short story, I decided to try this experience. I saw an opening to have a career there which I did and there is a lot of talent in America. In our academy, we have a lot of good players and one of our 2005 is in try out with Atalanta, Empoli and many teams want him. That is what we do, we develop players. 34
Can you believe this journey? FG: No, but yes. Sometimes when we woke up, we were like ‘Okay, we’re here.’ But this is not making us confused. We are really focused, this is the mission, it’s not a problem where we are. We just really focus on what we are doing. Do you remember the 1990 World Cup? FG: Of course. Did you go to the games? FG: No. I was 20 but you know at the time, you were watching the game in a town with your friends together, you were celebrating until the end and then we didn’t. You’re managing adults now as opposed to an academy. Does that change your mindset? FG: No. First of all, when I started to coach, I coached adults. It was semi-professional and then I went back to the young because it was about opportunity. It’s a game, it’s about having knowledge of the game and principle. I managed players like I manage my coaches in New York. I’m leading a group so the mindset is the same. I have to help them to be better coaches, I have to help them to be better players. If they are better players, then they can learn the way we want to play and then we can play better soccer and we can be successful. I don’t believe ‘Okay we have a good team’ don’t be organised, or lazy on the work, I really believe everything comes from what we do. Then we trust everything on the pitch in the game. It’s just this, in my mind, it’s simple. I manage my players like my family, they are young, they are working for me, for the club, like I manage coaches, I manage players. Like my family. They become like my sons. But we are working together, they are working for
me, they are working for the club. But I manage players the way I managed coaches, it’s the same thing. You’ve changed the training schedule? What is your thinking behind that? FG: It’s because when you plan a periodisation you need to get the job done. So, for example, I was planning to do two practices the first day, I did one and I was really upset because I couldn’t do two. But now we adjust the periodisation to get the job done. To have every practice with all the objectives that we put there to make sure that we cover everything. That is the idea. Will you have two sessions every day? FG: No. It’s not about having two training sessions. For example today we had a session with the defenders in the morning then the midfielders and the strikers in the afternoon, looking to meet the objectives. It looks like Alan Reynolds and John Gill have gone, are you looking to bring another coach in? FG: This is a discussion that is open with the club. We will see what Shane Keegan is going to do and then maybe yes, maybe we are going to need another assistant. But I am a manager that works a lot in the field myself. I am my assistant. Who did you admire as a coach? Trappatoni, Sacchi, Lippi? FG: Well, Lippi was a coach that in Juventus was really successful. He played a game of really intense soccer and you know, it changed a little bit and he was staying in the Juventus culture. In Italy now there are many many many good coaches. Unfortunately, Maurizio Sarri left Juventus. I believe that Sarri is a genius and
Marco Giampaolo (Torino) is another super important coach. All the coaches who I was following during the summer, I would go to look at them when they were practising because I know the staff, I know many of the people there. And there is another coach who is doing really well...his name is Roberto De Zerbi. I don’t know whether you know this name, he is a guy who works with Sassuolo and this guy is doing an amazing job there so....there are a few coaches who are doing a really amazing job in Italy.
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A promotional sign for the Dundalk v Red Star Belgrade match, designed by Marty Garland, on display at the bottom of the Hill Street Bridge in September 1988
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EXTRA TIME
THE SPECTATOR
Will Dundalk be paying a visit to Transnistria?
Dundalk dominated for large swathes. And so we progress, onwards and downwards, to the Europa League - and to Andorra of all places. There are no easy games in European
a ‘Qarabag Lite’; effectively state-sponsored by the Russianinfluenced government in the semi-autonomous, semi-bonkers Transnistria region of Moldova. Dundalk, naturally, were drawn away from home for the third successive time. It’s THE MANY IDIOSYNCRASIES OF not like these things will EUROPEAN FOOTBALL ARE EVIDENT even themselves out as this AT THE BEST OF TIMES AND THIS is the only season of one-leg SEASON THEY SEEM MAGNIFIED ties and we get to play them BY THE WHOLE CORONAVIRUS all away. PANDEMIC ISSUE. THE ‘CHAMPIONS Still, having to schlep to PATH’ OF THE EUROPA LEAGUE Hungary and Andorra, and possibly Moldova or Greece ALWAYS THROWS UP ITS NOVELTIES, or somewhere else ‘neutral’ WITH A SEEDING SYSTEM BASED is the kind of first world PURELY ON WHICH ROUND OF problem that most clubs THE CHAMPIONS LEAGUE A TEAM would love to have. DEPARTS. The many idiosyncrasies of European football are evident at the best of football, of course, but some times and this season they of them are enormously less seem magnified by the whole challenging than others. coronavirus pandemic issue. European veterans Sheriff The ‘champions path’ of the from Moldova lie in wait for the Europa League always throws winners. Sheriff are essentially up its novelties, with a seeding
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It’s been quite the rollercoaster since we last played a home game, against Waterford four weeks ago. It seems more happened in those four weeks than the previous four seasons combined, but there are plenty of other outlets for rumour, counter-rumour, slander and libel, so The Spectator is going to steer well clear! Suffice to say The Spectator wishes our new Italian overlords all the success in the world. Apart from the, erm, logistical changes going on about the place, there’s plenty of football stuff going on to entertain the Lilywhite faithful. Europe maintains a glorious hold over us, despite the disappointing defeat to Celje in a game
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elcome to not-Oriel-Park for tonight’s instalment of the Dundalk FC show.
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Sheriff celebrate after winning the Moldovan tite earier this year
system based purely on which round of the Champions League a team departs. Negotiating a single round of the Champions League bypasses a round of the Europa League and guarantees seeding in the next round. Strong clubs eliminated early will be unseeded, as we saw last year when we drew Slovan Bratislava. Anomalies this season saw Faeroese champions KI given a bye in the first round of the Champions League when Slovan players tested positive for the virus, while Tirana and Ludogorets were the lucky winners of a free pass from the third round of the Europa League to the playoffs as UEFA rebalanced the draws as a result of the
champions’ automatic place in the Champions League group stage not being required. Don’t ask! To add to the insanity, Linfield have technically earned four 90-minute wins for the Irish League this season, as the normal coefficient points were doubled to account for single-leg ties, and preliminary round wins are as valuable as qualifying round wins. Linfield beat the San Marino champions and received a walkover when Kosovar champions Drita who were unable to play due to players testing positive. Linfield’s reward has been a dream path to the play-offs via Floriana and the winners of Flora v KR Reykjavik. 61
The champions path of the Europa League offers a potentially lucrative and much more manageable route to group stage football than the cut-throat world of the main path, with the likes of Milan, Spurs, Sporting, PSV, Besiktas, Galatasaray, Wolfsburg and Basel to be negotiated. Unfortunately, it seems inevitable that a certain hooped club will enjoy the idiosyncrasies of the champions route next season. The Spectator just hopes we’ll be labouring through the traditional Europa League qualifying phase at the same time.