Canât even take a compliment
Itâs awful â country is full of these guys, full of rage and hate towards their own.
Self loathing Irishmen, how cliched
They are very needy.
Eire soccer fans streaming out of landsdowne road with 20 minutes to go just 3 days after winning an international banter competition over in Denmark.
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Many thousands of Republic of Ireland fans felt that they couldnât bear to stay until the bitter end of the Tuesday nightâs reality check by the ice-cold Danes. The sight of those thousands of empty seats and the corresponding heavy silence creeping into the evening offered a suitably haunting backdrop to the terrible experience that the players were suffering on the pitch.
Two years ago, Liverpool manager JĂźrgen Klopp found himself shocked by the sight of many, many hundreds of supporters filing out of Anfield with a good 10 minutes left in a grim arm-wrestle of a game in which the âPool trailed 2-1. Anything, in other words, was still possible but the supporters left anyway. This mass abandonment disturbed Klopp to the degree that he admitted afterwards: âI felt pretty alone at this moment.â
And Klopp is just a manager. So imagine how alone the 11 Ireland players must have felt on Tuesday night: their early-evening ambitions and dreams torn asunder, their minds shot by what was happening on the field and their bodies wrecked from chasing shadows in the second half and with every break in play inescapably aware that the crowd was vanishing around them. The message was clear: they had been abandoned to their fate.
Someone blackly remarked that you could probably accommodate the remaining fans in an average Victoriaâs Secret department store. Of course, the chances are that the people who stayed until the final whistle were not among the Irish fans who gathered last Saturday afternoon in their hundreds (think about that) outside the lingerie store on Strøget, the Copenhagen shopping boulevard, to cheer unwitting customers as they entered and left the place.
It was difficult to see at the time because there were, as said, hundreds of young Irish men in their replica shirts and scarves semi-circled around the shop but itâs probable that many of the customers leaving and entering the shop were women. Youâd have to wonder how many of them enjoyed the experience â and if they went along with the bantz, the harmless fun, what choice did they really have? Strøget marked the low point of the ongoing self-congratulatory phenomenon that is the Best Fans In The World touring carnival.
It was orchestrated, cringingly self-aware, arguably an act of harassment and also dull and tired. You could see it in the polite, fleeting smiles of the locals as they walked past. Smiles that said: ah, the Irish. No wonder it was a cinch to invade the place all those centuries ago. But if Saturday afternoon was one of those scenes that made you wish that the Irish would get over the being-Irish thing, then Tuesday night marked Last Orders for the delusion that Irish fans are any better, any different.
For it was in the last 20 minutes of the match that the players needed the crowd most. The notion of a contest and the glory of making it to Russia had long disappeared. The managerial half-time personnel gamble had failed and all of a sudden, journeymen Danish footballers were attempting a passable impression of Brazil circa â70. Fans leave games early for all kinds of reasons. For some, its sheer pragmatism: beat the others, beat the rush and get home at a reasonable hour for another working day.
Others walk out in the belief that their departure is a kind of protest-vote or registration of disgust at the ineptitude of what they have seen. Itâs a symbolic message to the manager.
Others convince themselves that they canât simply bear to watch anymore: that it is too painful. As ex-Westlife crooner Brian McFadden said, in explaining his need to hit the bricks when the game was still a relative cliff-hanger at 1-3: âMy heart was just ripped out of my chest.â That sounds absolutely appalling and clearly required immediate medical intervention. But not everyone has that excuse.
Sport is littered with stories of people leaving games early and then living to regret the moment. Among the Manchester United fans who decided to cut their losses early at the Champions League final in 1999 when Alex Fergusonâs team trailed Bayern Munich 1-0 in the 89th minute was the clubâs eternal poster boy for on and off-field glamour and beauty, Mr George Best. The Belfast boy was in a taxi when Teddy Sheringham and Ole Gunnar SolskjĂŚr hit those screamers and never saw his clubâs most famous hour.
In 2013, hundreds of Miami Heat fans filed out of the American Airlines arena in the NBA finals when their team trailed by four with 28 seconds left. Many US arenas have escalators: leaving with the mob can be a slow process. Cue a mental 30 seconds in which the Heatsâ LeBron James and Ray Allen hit three-pointers to bring the game to overtime. By then, a few thousand fans had left the arena and after realising their mistake, they began furiously pounding the glass-doors for re-admittance, to no avail. They missed one of the great moments in the history of their team. And it served them right.
Clearly, there was never going to be a miraculous revival once Ireland fell 3-1 behind on Tuesday night. Beating Denmark 4-3 just wasnât going to happen. The team was falling apart, as sometimes happens in sport. People knew they werenât going to miss anything except more Danish goals when they decided to leave.
But that is why it was vital that they remained part of the crowd, part of what had been something special at the start of the night, when 50,000 individuals got together to create a really spine-tingling atmosphere around Lansdowne. Half a century ago, baseball fan John Updike showed up for a low-key autumn daytime baseball game in Fenway Park because it was Ted Williamsâs last day with the Boston Red Sox. He wrote about what was a maudlin midweek afternoon that had nothing much riding on it and the essay, Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu, was and is a perfect depiction of what it is like to be in the crowd â the frustrations, the annoyances and, of course, the pure privilege.
The rows and debates over Irish football â whether Martin OâNeill should stay or go, how the team should play, whether the FAI is doing enough to bring young talent through â will rage on. All that the supporters can do, when they turn up on international nights, is become part of the crowd.
Irish international football has a peculiar and slightly exotic history: it is mostly a series of stubbornly prosaic 1-1 draws broken by era-defining occasions lit by fireworks of deed and emotion and offering those lucky enough to be in the crowd to say: I was there. Part of the fun of following Ireland is that itâs kind of a treasure hunt: you never know when you are going to stumble on the next improbable moment of glory.
Stuttgart, Genoa, Rome, New York, Lansdowne, Gelsenkirchen, Lille, Cardiff: the roll call of big Irish football moments have come to serve as very specific and emotive markers of time and place. For a small while on Tuesday night, Ireland versus Denmark felt like it was going to be one of those nights until, quite quickly, it turned into something you wanted to forget. Thousands made the decision to start forgetting before it was even over.
Those in the smaller crowd on Tuesday night, the one that stayed to see the wrecked Irish players leave the field, can at least say: I was there, all the way.
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Good article that.
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A dire article. Fans of all sports head for the exits when their team are getting a pasting, itâs human nature. I stayed till the end because itâs only a short walk home, but 517 where I was sitting was deserted at full time and you couldnât blame them.
These âlook at me, Iâm an uber-fanâ articles are fucking embarrassing.
Certain standards are demanded though if youâre laying claim to âBest Fans in the Worldâ status. Leaving early is not an option.
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Youâre either in or out. In all my years attending Limerick matches, I have stayed until the bitter end. The pasting by Tipp in 09 was particularly hard but like I said youâre either in or out.
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Who cares about this really, theyâll turn into Munster fans at a penalty kick and start telling people to go back to their seats, you pay your money and do what you want
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Not the point
Only a complete fucking idiot would think Oirish soccer fans are the best in the world. Iâd have legged it after the 4th goal went in if I had to travel far to get home.
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Not for you mike but you canât sit in judgement of middle of the road supporters who have better things to be doing than singing the fields of Athenry or cringing at the same,
Theyâre the very same ones who would have stayed and sung it had they won. Thatâs my point.
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Well, obviously they arenât going to leave if the team is winning
Really! Gâway
Ireland fans are the best in the world.
Itâs sad for the World Cup that a disgraceful refereeing decision means they wonât be going to Russia next summer.
you like hurling, there are 5 league games and a few championship games a year. You dont even follow your own county
the commitment needed to be a hurling fan is non existent
stop lecturing real sports fans how to support
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