Republic of Ireland manager Vera Pauw has criticised her German counterpart Martina Voss-Tecklenburg for announcing in the run-up to Saturday's European Championship qualifier between the two sides in Essen that four of her most experienced players will be allowed to return to their club sides after the match rather than have to travel on Montenegro for another group game on Tuesday.
When naming her squad last week, Voss-Tecklenburg said that the Ireland game was the more important of the two from the point of view of securing automatic qualification and suggested that the physical challenge Ireland present might take its toll. With this in mind, she revealed that Alexandra Popp, Svenja Huth and Kathrin Hendrich, all of German double winners Wolfsburg, and PSG's Sara Däbritz, will be released once the game is safely out of the way.
“The top players will not travel to Montenegro,” said Pauw on Wednesday, “which in my opinion is not fair play. It’s false competition. It will have an influence on the game because those players only have to play one game and then they’re off, so they will put their 100 per cent energy into it even if the scoreline is not going well for us. They will keep going because they will have no incentive to take their foot off the gas. And that is why I don’t think it’s right.
“Of course, it is Germany’s right to choose whoever they want. They have the right to do it. Martina can choose the players she wants. But announcing it already; before the Ireland game. I don’t think that that is right.
“The players have had a very, very heavy programme with the Champions League [Wolfsburg reached the final], and the double that is just behind them. With the leagues starting up, the clubs are demanding, especially the ones who play outside Germany. And so from their side I can imagine why they do it; what I don’t understand is that they put it in the press, before the game.”
Ireland lead Group I by a point from the Germans but with an extra game played and the clear sense is that they are actually playing for the points required to secure one of three automatic qualification spots that will go to the best runners-up.
Pauw reckons the Germans are the best team in the world right now, a claim their 31 goals in four qualifying games might tend to support, but her hope is that her players will be well enough prepared to take something out of this game or at least something positive from it into next month’s critically important trip to Ukraine.
“I try to be realistic in a way that we get the best out of us,” says Pauw. “And then we see where we get. We are preparing to get the best out of us to give Germany the best game ever. And then we’ll see if that is good enough to get a result.
“It would not be realistic to, to say: “We go on to win,” or “we go on to draw”. The game itself will show how far we are and we will be prepared the best way we can. And with all our energy, all our power and the players will be ready. I think that you will be proud of them whatever the result.
“The good thing in having this game now is that our limits are really tested on Saturday. After Saturday we know exactly what we can and what we cannot do at the top level. And what we have to improve. And that brings them more readiness for next month. So you can even see this game as preparation for the Ukrainian game.”
Pauw was speaking from Germany where the squad met up earlier in the week. Because of the arrangements, the team’s Irish medical staff would, as things stand, have had to quarantine before returning to work back in Ireland and so a Dutch doctor and physio have been brought in for the week.
Ultimately, the need might have been avoided but at great trouble and expense and Pauw insists that this is not another instance of the association cutting corners where its women’s team is concerned.
“No,” she says, “there’s no difference at all, no difference at all. It’s really a Government decision. The hospitals need to have their doctors. The employers made the decision that they cannot deal with their medical staff going into quarantine when they come back and it is the Government that did not give the exemption to them.
“They [the Dutch] are very experienced and the handover has been superb so I’m actually very, very happy the way that we have solved the problem.”
