Sitting in a restaurant next to the Zawisza Stadium in the Polish town of Bydgoszcz last week, the Republic of Ireland manager, Brian Kerr, was asked, not for the first time, to sum up Liam Miller.
"Ah, he's a determined little fella," Kerr said. "I'm sure he's not going there to be in the reserve team." There, of course, is Old Trafford. On 1 July Miller leaves Celtic and joins Manchester United due to a pre-contract agreement signed in January which caused consternation in Scotland, and something of a backlash aimed at the 22-year-old player. "I wouldn't say the booing has all gone away but it has eased down a bit," Miller said last week. "I just try to blank it out and get on with my own game." And show that determination.
On Wednesday he was given his first international start by Kerr, a coach who has nurtured Miller since his early teens and has spoken excitedly about the first time he ever saw the midfielder in training, in a session specially arranged for him. The last time he talked so effusively it was about Damien Duff. Not only was Miller handed the green jersey, it also bore the symbolic No 6. It was the jersey earmarked for Roy Keane. Instead the young man dubbed his successor, for club and country, by Ireland's Under-21 manager, Don Givens, pulled it on. "Liam is so composed in possession, he never panics and very rarely wastes a pass," Givens said.
Numbers loom large in Miller's life. Although he is regarded as Keane's heir, that has more to do with the fact that both hail from Cork. Sir Alex Ferguson likens Miller's style to Brian McClair, others see him as Paul Scholes' under-study. But Miller himself worships Eric Cantona. The No 7. It was the Frenchman's poster above his bed, even if he claims, diplomatically perhaps, that Keane was also an idol. "A great experience," said Miller of taking part in a training session with Keane in Dublin. "Growing up in Cork, he was a hero to many of us." But not as much as Cantona.