Joe O’Cearuill: The ex-Ireland international who says his son JJ Gabriel is the next Messi

Joe O’Cearuill wouldn’t want to be sensitive. Since the news broke last week about his 15-year-old son telling Manchester United that he wants to leave the club, where he’s been since he was nine, his character has been somewhat questioned. Not least by elements of the woebegone United faithful who already had enough to be fretting about.

As an active enough user of social media, O’Cearuill will no doubt be aware by now that he, as his son’s ‘representative’, is being held entirely responsible for a situation that has been likened to Barcelona losing Lionel Messi before he ever played a senior game for them. Which didn’t, of course happen. But that’s how cataclysmic this development is.