Caoimhín Kelleher was right, and the only party in this that should be embarrassed is UEFA. A handshake is a tiny thing, a two-second gesture that pretends everything on the pitch is ordinary. Kelleher declined to help sell that pretence, and he's the one taking the heat for it. That's backwards.
Ahead of the Nations League meeting in Debrecen on September 27, Ireland wore black armbands and skipped the pre-match handshakes before beating Israel 3-0. They did it again before the return leg, bowing their heads during the Israeli anthem. Kelleher, as captain, didn't take Israel's captain Dor Peretz by the hand. None of this is complicated. None of it was aimed at a 23-year-old footballer as a person.
The fixture itself was loaded before anyone kicked a ball. More than 160 Irish athletes and sports figures signed an open letter calling on the team to pull out. The FAI voted 75-32, with three abstentions, to play anyway. A clean boycott never happened because the FAI's own meeting materials noted that walking away would carry UEFA sanctions, both financial and competitive. So the players were handed a stripped-down menu. Play and salute it, or play and say nothing. Kelleher found the third thing UEFA couldn't fine him for, and used it.
Israel shouldn't be in this competition right now, and that has nothing to do with punishing ordinary Israeli players. Sport's governing bodies have a well-worn lever for a state accused of mass atrocities: exclusion. They pulled it on Russia. They pulled it on apartheid-era South Africa. UEFA has simply decided not to pull it this time, even though Israel's military campaign in Gaza is the subject of an active International Court of Justice case. The armbands, the head-bow, the handshake, none of it would exist if UEFA hadn't chosen to look away.
The strongest objection to what Kelleher did is this: if the match is illegitimate, boycott it, don't play and then make a gesture. Fine in principle. In practice, UEFA built a trap where the principled option costs your federation points and money, and then UEFA gets to tut at the players for the compromise it forced. You don't get to confiscate every real form of protest and then sneer at the symbolic one that's left.
The people turning this into something ugly aren't on the Irish bench. Military chants rang out of the away end. Monkey chants were directed at Adam Idah, and the allegation couldn't even be formally investigated, blocked on a procedural technicality that tells you how toothless the process is. The day before the return leg, Israeli reporters turned a routine Ireland press conference into a shouting match that ended early. That's the circus around the fixture UEFA insists must go ahead for the good of the game.
The politics arrived the moment the draw put this tie on the calendar against this backdrop. Kelleher refused to be a prop.
The FAI deserves a nudge for choosing the muddled middle, playing the games but snubbing the handshake, because a compromise like that satisfies nobody. But the body that could have made the whole choice unnecessary sat in Nyon and did nothing. Kelleher kept his hands by his sides for two seconds. UEFA has kept its eyes shut for far longer.
