Encontrei 2 entrevistas do Mickey Walsh a jornais Irlandeses de ha uns anos atras, tem a sua piada, espero que gostem:
\"Mickey Walsh walked off the pitch with Liam Brady after teaching him the Portuguese for cheat. Ireland had lost 1-0 to Belgium, their chances of qualifying for the World Cup knocked back and the Portuguese referee, Raul Nazare, was to blame. Walsh and Brady followed him off the pitch \"Ladrao, Ladrao\".
When Mickey got back to Portugal, he didn\'t stop talking about it. Finally somebody at the club advised him that he should keep quiet. Nazare wasn\'t likely to do them any favours if their star player kept calling him a cheat. Anyway, if Mickey had said something, maybe Nazare could have ended up on Ireland\'s side.
Ireland could have been at the World Cup. The team of \'82 would have been the legends. Mickey Walsh would have been an Irish legend.
\"This year, I feel like I\'ve been working for the clubs more than the players,\" an agent at Premier remarked this summer as he explained the re-education that has been a part of any good agent\'s job this year. The golden goose has gone and who knows when she\'s coming back.
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\"One afternoon, while Walsh was tending a barbecue in the garden, Christine, his wife, called him inside.
\"It\'s Tommy Doc,\" she said, handing him the phone.
They grunted at each other.
\"Alright?\"
\"Yeah, alright.\"
\"Listen, there\'s a Portuguese club in for you. A guy called Otto Knaus is going to give you a call. I\'ve told him you probably won\'t go because you\'re an awkward c**t.\"
Walsh thought about it for a moment. \"Tell him to give me a ring Tom. I\'ve never been to Portugal. I\'ll take the missus for a weekend.\"
That move? The year was 1980: Liam Brady had signed for Juventus, Lawrie Cunningham was at Real Madrid and Mickey Walsh was about to become the third member of a very exclusive club. From the moment he arrived in Porto his mind was made up.
\"The stadium was fantastic. I thought \'Are you sure it\'s me you want?\"\' After checking out some apartments, he sat down to discuss terms and was greeted on his return to England by a back page headline in The Mirror: \'WALSH THINKS HE\'S JOHANN CRUYFF\'.
\"I couldn\'t believe it,\" he says, \"I thought \'Who the f*** said this?\' It was the Doc again. He had slaughtered me in the papers. I walked in and threw the paper onto his desk: \'Tommy what\'s that?\' He says: \'The agent told me you\'re asking too much money and they can\'t do the deal\'. I said \'You\'ve slaughtered me Tom. I want an apology\'. He said \'I\'ll sort it out, no problem\'. I\'m still waiting for the apology.\"
The move to Porto saved his career. \"I was guaranteed to play in Europe every year. And it focused me. I HAD to concentrate. It got me out of the slide and away from what I had become.\"
In 1984, after five successful seasons at Porto, he played in the Cup Winners Cup Final defeat to Juventus. A year later, he was making headlines again, not for his move to another Portuguese side, Salgueiros, but for the arrival, after ten years of marriage, of those babies, Liam (after Brady), Kelly, Kate and Sarah the world\'s first non-identical test-tube quads.
The year also marked his 21st and final cap for Ireland, a World Cup qualifying defeat to Denmark. \"The Irish games were always huge for me but I didn\'t really have a good run. Some say I was unfortunate, some say I wasn\'t good enough. Ray Treacy was the party animal and the guy with the banjo and Gilesy loved him to death. The last time I was over he (Treacy) says: \'You should have learnt to sing Walshy!\' And he\'s right. I\'d have had 50 caps.\" After almost nine seasons abroad, Walsh retired in 1989 at the age of 35.
At first, he considered staying in Portugal but couldn\'t afford it. \"I would have needed to earn 20,000 a year just to put the kids through school and I couldn\'t afford it.\" He moved back to England, settled his family in Buckinghamshire and began writing the next chapter of his life.
What was it called? What was he trained for? How should it begin? It was a very difficult time. \"It doesn\'t matter how much money you\'ve got or how well you have done. There really should be counselling. You find yourself sitting at home in the afternoons watching 15-to-One on the telly thinking \'What the hell can I do?\"\'
He sold insurance for a year, started coaching, worked in corporate hospitality but yearned to get back to the business he knew best. He formed Mickey Walsh Management, became an official FIFA agent and established his credentials with a stg£3m deal for Dean Holdsworth.\"
Achei interessante as historias e imagino as muitas mais que tera para contar. Tive pena de nao ser do meu tempo acompanhar os seus golos...
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