Really? We need to ask ourselves why some people are questioning how Irish Pico Lopes is
Have we forgotten how we rode on the Granny Rule coat-tails for so long?
What defines identity? What defines nationality? What defines your Irishness? These are questions we have been struggling to answer as a nation for some time now, the questions amplified by the World Cup and the heroics of one Pico Lopes.
Now, hands up, I am working with Pico and on behalf of Pico. We knew each other before Cape Verde qualified but in a football sense if you know what I mean - as Niall Quinn once said, you make acquaintances in football but very few friends.
So Pico was probably more of an acquaintance than a friend. We had worked on a few things together in my previous life, including that horrible incident outside one League of Ireland ground where racist taunts were thrown at the Shamrock Rovers squad by those brave kids who hid their faces with balaclavas and hoods.
I knew from those brief encounters that Pico was a good guy so I was happy to sit down with him last October when we met and discussed his qualification for the World Cup and what it would mean for him, for his family and for his profile.
World Cups are strange creatures. They exist in a bubble on the ground but in the outside world they become all consuming, they demand attention and that comes from every corner of the globe.
Do something at a World Cup and the world will know. Do something extraordinary at a World Cup and the world will want to know even more.
That’s what I said to Pico back then. This World Cup was always going to be his chance to shine but with that opportunity would come intrusion, most of it welcome both from media and commercial interests.
We agreed to work together and it has been an absolute pleasure to do so as that forecast has come to pass. Slowly but surely, what I call The Awakening is coming to life and gaining power by the day.
To be fair, from the outset the Irish sports chain INTERSPORT Elverys got what Pico was doing on the World Cup stage and came on board with the Nike boot deal that has supplied the predominantly pink footwear you will see Pico wearing on the American stage.
Others have followed, slowly at first, and across all strands. There was a burst of media attention around the draw in December, just as Pico was receiving the SSE Airtricity/Soccer Writers Ireland Personality of the Year award in Clontarf Castle.
The media requests from far and near, right across the globe, maintained a steady trickle into the New Year and began to take off again in May as he prepared to depart for Cape Verde’s training camp in Lisbon.
Throughout the process, Pico did anything and everything that was asked of him, including helping a young Irish kid at media college in England with his thesis over a 30 minute Zoom call.
Very few footballers I have met have been as accommodating with their time as Pico - he is up there in leadership terms with Seamus Coleman as a good friend has suggested, on the same pedestal as Mick McCarthy for his sincerity and composure under pressure.
That’s what makes events this week almost upsetting. Pico was immense against Spain, Uruguay and Saudi Arabia as the Cape crusaders deservedly qualified for the knock-out stages of the World Cup and rewrote history.
At the end of the match an Irish fan, Jack Hennessy whom you can hear from on this site, ensured our tricolour found its way to Pico as the Cape Verde squad celebrated with a lap of honour in Houston.
Jack, as you will hear in our interview, wanted to celebrate not just Pico’s success with Cape Verde but his Irish roots, his Irishness.
And why not? Pico was born in Dublin to an Irish mother and a father from Cape Verde. Yet some have questioned his right to hold an Irish flag as well as an Irish passport, in print and on social media?
Why? The world has changed since Ray Houghton played for his Donegal roots instead of his Scottish upbringing? His goal against England in ‘88 will always be up there with the greatest Irish sporting moments of all time but it doesn’t deny his Scottish links, nor should it.
Pico is both Irish and Cape Verdean, he has a dual identity as is the norm for so many across the modern world. We should celebrate that, not decree it.
I was born to a Dublin mother and a Galway father and brought up in Meath - I claim Meath in Gaelic football and Galway in hurling and make no apologies for it. Would the same dissenters deny me that joy (at times), never mind that right?
Pico Lopes would have been slaughtered if he had turned his back on that Irish flag on Friday night. Now he is being slaughtered by a few for picking it up, turning it around and celebrating his Irishness.
Why? They really need to get a life. And open their minds as well as their eyes to the new world and a new Ireland.