This exclusive interview first appeared in Issue 32 of MUNDIAL's print magazine, alongside a 20-page love letter to Boca Juniors, an all-encompassing chat with Mr Stone Island and the first ever investigation into the weird and wonderful world of football memes.
Ireland had arrived in Rome from Genoa, and Pope John Paul II had already greeted Packie Bonner with the words ‘Il Portiere’—The Goalkeeper. They’d been doing their work solely on islands before that, drawing 1–1 with England in Sardinia, then two more draws with The Netherlands and Egypt in Sicily, before heading to Liguria to beat Romania on penalties. Now, it was time to take the capital.
Italy were favourites in the womb of their own backyard. Men with evocative names like Maldini and Ancelotti, Baggio and Schillaci were expected to win against men with evocative names like McGrath and Townsend, Quinn and Aldridge. 10,000 or so fans, all green green green, wandered the streets in the hours ahead of kick-off, with Yugoslavia taking Argentina to penalties in the early evening game.
At the Stadio Olimpico, Ireland were preparing for the game of a generation. A 9pm kick-off. Sun setting. The buzz and hum and butterflies of hope, romance, and heroics dancing in the lights.
“It was Walter Zenga, the keeper, who spoke about us and almost dismissed us,” Mick McCarthy tells me from across the table. This evening, 34 years later, we are taking Milan, where I live now. Mick is my first friend to visit about a month or so after I arrived from London. After getting his number from his son Michael a couple of weeks ago, I texted Mick and three seconds later received a phone call where a man with a very familiar Yorkshire accent said, “Alright, James, how’s it going?” down the line. When I mentioned I was in Milan, Mick said he might pop over for an autumnal break with his wife Fiona and that he’d be in touch. Three days later, he’d booked it, and now here we are. Back to Mick on Zenga:
“And, well, him saying that was like a red rag to a bull. But when we went to the ground, we all turned up as we normally did. There’d be some with flip-flops on, some with shorts on, and we’re all in the green gear. We were there first, and the Argentina game was on the big screen. Some of us were laying down on the grass, some were wandering around, some chatting; we were just totally relaxed.
“And then the Italians turned up, dead smart in their matching Diadora tracksuits and sunglasses. And they saw us, and you could see them thinking, what is this going on? We just didn’t even look at them. I remember that vividly. We just went, oh, here they are. and carried on watching the game. It was like that. Let them worry about us.
“We thought we could beat him. It didn't faze us going to play Italy in Rome.”
Italy win, of course. They hadn’t conceded all tournament and weren’t going to let that go quite yet. Mick remembers ‘his little mate’ Schillaci stamping on his foot, throwing an elbow back to give him a black eye, and then threatening him with a knife across the throat gesture.
Mick remembers everything, it turns out, and for the next couple of hours, sat in a nondescript hotel in Milan with a couple of beers for company, we’re going to talk about all the things he remembers. Starting in Barnsley. Coalescing in Ireland. And making me fall in love with him in Wolverhampton.
Mick McCarthy was born in Barnsley in 1959 and grew up in Worsbrough Bridge with his mum, dad, older brother Kevin, younger sister Catherine, and younger brother John. His junior school was across the road, he went to Catholic church, and right opposite the family home was a field. Of course, that field became Mick’s football pitch, and it was here, alongside playing for Barnsley Boys—a team connected to the town rather than the club—that he started to perfect the art of defending.
JB: How would you describe your childhood then? What would your teachers or mates say about a young Mick McCarthy? The 60s and 70s are very different to the 2020s.
MM: We just played out. Nothing strange, nothing unusual; it was just a regular upbringing, if there is such a thing. We played on the field or on the street, or I rode my bike. My mates used to all come and call for my dad to play out, actually. There were no gadgets or anything, so we had to make our own interests really.
It sounds crazy now, but we’d just walk for miles and miles. There was a reservoir. We'd go down there, and we’d go cutting bulrushes and sell them on our way home. We weren’t in a city centre; we were in a suburb of Barnsley, and so we just played out. That’s what we did.
We played in the house with my dad, too. We had a lounge diner, and the dining table would get moved out the way, and we used to play into the curtains. Football was everywhere: my dad would talk about Puskás all the time, and we had a ball kitted so we could play inside. That was my old fella—doing drag and pushbacks. He was the instigator of all the football in the house.
JB: We had gadgets, but that sounds very similar to my upbringing, and my dad would come out and play football and cricket with all of my mates, too. But football for you became serious. How did that happen? There weren’t extensive scouting networks looking for the next big thing like there are now.
MM: At our junior school, when Mr Taylor left, all the teachers were women. Women didn’t play so much football then. I was the captain of the team, and you know, at ten years old, I used to pump the ball up, make sure all the nets were out, all that. I remember them saying to me well, we don’t know how to do that, and my auntie was one of the teachers, so I was sort of dedicated to looking after the football there for a while.
By the time I left school at 16, I was actually going to go down the pit. I was going into the mining industry as an apprentice electrician. But Keith Steel, my coach at Barnsley Boys, recommended me for Barnsley Football Club, where his dad was the secretary. Our Boys Club were ripping it up, you know, and I was quite clearly one of the best players in that league. Keith recommended that Barnsley sign me and sent me down to knock on the secretary’s door. Imagine doing that now.
The MM stands for Mick McCarthy, not Merlin the Magician
He asked who I was and told me to stay where I was. I thought I might not be getting this, but he came back out with a piece of paper, and I was back training as an apprentice the following day.
I adored the job. I was getting nine quid a week, six for my mother and three for me or something. As a sixteen-year-old, it'd be five and four. She got the bulk of it for digs.
I loved my time as an apprentice. We stayed late and played head tennis, one touch in the gym against the wall. We’d be divoting pitches and sweeping terraces. The camaraderie and all that was great, playing against Leeds and Sheffield United, Sunderland and Newcastle, and we won the Northern Intermediate League, which was for 16 to 19-year-olds. And when you’re 16 playing against 19-year-olds who’ve been training at a football club for three years, you’re playing against men. It was a tough upbringing that suited me down to the ground.
Mick went on to make his league debut for Barnsley in a 4–0 win over Rochdale on the 20th August 1977. Over the course of the next six seasons, he established himself as the first-choice centre half and made over 300 appearances for his boyhood club: exceptional moustache, smart side parting, gleaming red jersey. After making his debut in the old Fourth Division, Barnsley and Mick got promoted in the 1978/79 season, and two years after that, they went up again and found themselves in Division Two.
