A Love Letter to Eamon Dunphy, the Most Important Voice in Irish Football

Eamon Dunphy is a football pundit and political commentator. He's appeared as part of Ireland's foremost footballing panel for RTÉ – our state broadcaster – for the past 30 years. He also writes articles and books, and, for over a decade, hosted current-affairs radio shows on Ireland's biggest stations. Though an ex-footballer hardened in England's lower leagues, he resists stereotype, having the ability to change depending on his audience. He's a Renaissance man, a kaleidoscope of shapes and colours, all combining to form an image of a middle finger raised defiantly to the sky.

With Liam Brady (ex-Arsenal) and John Giles (ex-Leeds), he makes up RTÉ's panel, Dunphy playing the Holy Spirit to Giles' Father and Brady's Son. He's the wildcard, the ill-defined hype man in the corner lashing out; he's the reason Irish people watch football punditry instead of turning it down.

Most recently he called Samir Nasri " a pup" after Manchester City's exit from the Champions League, and Yaya Toure "an obvious waster", which – if you know Dunphy – is really just the tip of the iceberg. He also predicted Liverpool would become a mid-table club as lately as last week, angering fans still hurting over a 4-1 defeat to Arsenal.

Does he have a UK equivalent? I don't think so – he's more Paxman than Lawrenson, more Snow than Hansen, more embittered French philosopher than anything to do with football.

He splits opinions, to say the least. Trying to come to a consensus on him by reading tweets, articles and YouTube comments, the general vibe seemed to be "entertaining but full of shit". People love to hate him, so much so that they forget the hate part. He's essentially a bad-guy wrestler – someone with all the signs of being annoying and unfair, but managing to pull it off in such a stylish way that you eventually forgive him for it.

But maybe this is insulting to him. Sometimes I think he only seems unfair because our sensitivity doesn't extend beyond tribal allegiances, be it to our teams or political parties. Does he troll people because they deserve to be trolled? Because in the worlds he operates in – football and politics – if people take the bait, it's indicative of them not really knowing much? If Liverpool fans are angry with him, isn't it proof that they care too much, rather than being a reflection on anything he's saying?

Certainly being a fan of Dunphy requires a sense of humour, and if you have one, he rewards you endlessly. Including all his outbursts in one article seems impossible; there are so many of them – spilling across endless YouTube videos – that we'd be here all week. Instead, I'm merely including his most hilarious, so see if you can lighten up.

"Gerrard, right? Found out tonight. Nothing player."

"This fella Ronaldo is a cod… He's a disgrace to the game."

Overhyped players are Dunphy's bread and butter – the ultimate attention-getter – yet, to a team, he holds no allegiance, despite what fans of Man Utd, Liverpool and Chelsea would say. Rather, his allegiance is to honesty and hard work, except when it isn't; then it's just him being contrarian, which – in worlds of yes men – has value. He's the miserable cunt at the disco, the back-row giggler at your funeral. He exists because every two-footed verbal lunge beyond the bounds of conformity is a necessary reminder that this – all of this – is chaos.

"However astute he is at business, Abramovich, when it comes to football, he's a fool… He's a stage-door Johnny."

His language is of the people, for the people. It's rife with colloquialism hacked away as any of us would hack it. He isn't interested in his own verbiage; his poetry eludes him, he's intelligent but a common-sense man first and foremost, always about to bring the house down by saying shit no one else would say: the obvious.

"[Glenn Whelan] is a terrible player. He can't run, he can't pass, he can't tackle, he doesn't see anything… He drives two Ferraris."

(You're going to want to skip to about 4:40)

"I think Niall Quinn is a creep."

Dunphy says this with the knowledge that Ireland's a very small place, that one day he might meet his maker. He's the anti-internet, the refreshing antithesis to anonymous trolling. Would you call Roy Keane – someone you'd once written a book for and so must know pretty well – "a pain in the arse" on national radio?

(8:00)

"Rod Liddle: he's the guy who ran away and left his wife for a young one!"

"When Neymar was shaping up to take that penalty, I thought he was fucking dreading it."

Dunphy is the working man transposed to a national platform, justifiably bitter, desperate to hear the sound of his own voice. He's our most lyrical of friends, the gifted, mile-a-minute dickhead who talks the loudest and gesticulates the wildest when we're just trying to enjoy a pint.

(1:10)

Souness: "Where did you manage?"

Dunphy: "I didn't manage anywhere. I managed to stay alive for 63 and a half years, baby!"

His working-man credentials are real: born into a flat in Dublin in 1945 with no hot water or electricity, with only one room, his mum was a church-going housewife, his dad a frequently-unemployed builder's labourer. Dunphy would learn football on the streets before representing Ireland at schoolboy level when he was 15.

He'd win a trial for Man Utd the same year, 1960, impressing Sir Matt Busby enough to be offered an apprenticeship contract. However, due to his physique and lack of power, he failed to break into the first team and began a career of playing for smaller clubs like York City, Millwall and Charlton. He also represented Ireland 23 times at senior level, usually as John Giles' reserve.

Dunphy was never a stereotypical footballer, politicised at an early age because of the injustice perpetrated on his father. The reason his father was unemployed so frequently was that he wasn't a member of Fianna Fáil, Ireland's dominant political party. Subsequently, after Bloody Sunday, Dunphy was the only Irish player brave enough to wear a black armband protesting the atrocity in England.

At a time when football was a second-class sport in Ireland – accused of being "too English" and in perennial subservience to Gaelic games – Dunphy championed it on TV and in print brashly, unapologetically. That he should mince words about the game he loved appalled him, something that came to a head spectacularly during the 1990 World Cup. With the country finally enthused about our footballing prospects, he had the balls to rightly criticise our agricultural style of play, maybe going a little too far, however, when he threw a pen in disgust on camera. Led by manager Jack Charlton calling him "a bitter little man", the country turned against him – not for the last time – with fans at Dublin Airport trying to flip over his car.

In both his worlds – football and politics – he's surrounded by bland shills peddling everything except the truth, where disconnection from – and disregard of – average men seems standard. He once called Ireland " a dump" in reference to how badly our politicians had fucked it up – to how badly our media served its citizens – and when asked about this on national TV he doubled down and called it "a kip", pointing to massive unemployment, a failing health service and what he termed "not a functioning democracy". He also called Bono "a pompous git", which is something that always needs to be said.

I won't defend every aspect of Eamon Dunphy. He's undoubtedly a flawed man, prone lately to horrible ads for corporations like Cadbury and McDonalds. He's also aligned himself with bookmaker Boylesports, appearing on street corners in dodgy blue raincoats. But through all of this, he remains recognisable as "one of us", as someone whose flair for saying the wrong thing – which is rarely morally wrong – burns brightly.

At heart, I think he's frustrated with Ireland's tendency towards mediocrity, with our ever-present inferiority complex, which he shares with Roy Keane, another big opinion-splitter. Thought entertaining by most, full of shit by many, Dunphy is a national treasure.

@0jnolan

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