- Fucking 1. If half of those gombeens singing for the final 10 minutes attended Airtricity League games on a weekley basis maybe our national side wouldn’t be so shite.
Knives out for Trap by looks of it from Sadlier and Dunphy. Liam Brady is bang on the money. He may have got some of selections wrong but in no way was he playing mind games with comments as Dunphy suggests.
Some lad got his picture in the Sun the other day licking some birds tit during the match.
It’s nuts the way this fact gets ignored by some people. The Euro 88 team had 5 players from the top 2 clubs in England and they didn’t get out of their group. Even the 2002 world cup team was way better than this one, with 4 or 5 players who were at least at top five premiership clubs and those players were mainly young as well. Like you say, the ‘bigger’ names we have are over the hill, and
the younger players aren’t that good.
The sad reality for Irish football is that we will probably be waiting for a long time to have a selection of players playing at top clubs in England, and even squads like we had in 2002 will be a fond memory. Competing against all time great sides like Spain is utter fantasy in that scenario.
Yeah all true wtb other than the fact that I don’t think we should restrict ourselves to thinking our players can only play in England. I think if we had more of our players playing outside of English football culture it could help us a bit. With no tv deal looks like EPL will be one of best leagues in Europe for years to come but I’m not sure the style of football will change all that much if recent trends are anything to go by.
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Yeah all true wtb other than the fact that I don’t think we should restrict ourselves to thinking our players can only play in England. I think if we had more of our players playing outside of English football culture it could help us a bit. With no tv deal looks like EPL will be one of best leagues in Europe for years to come but I’m not sure the style of football will change all that much if recent trends are anything to go by.
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No, but there doesn’t seem to be any trend indicating Irish players will become a regular feature in other European leagues. Obviously the trend of greater numbers of young continental european and african players in the English league system correlates fairly strongly with the decline of our own prominence. The same opportunities aren’t there for Irish players at academy or senior level and it’s hard to see what will replace that. Irish development structures will have to get much better I suppose.
Well what structures are in place to develop young players, to give them a window to other footballing cultures/ leagues. There is an abundance of good underage footballers from 13-15 but many of them just don’t get the development they need, slip through the net or are lost to other sports with better structure/facilities.
Well that could be opportunity for some of our better players to move on. Even if some of our average players moved from likes of Stoke it could help imo.
Well majority of really class players go to England and then continue their careers from there. If more of our players played in teams who pass the ball then perhaps we could play more rounded game. Few English teams play passing football and so we struggle internationally. Even look like at how England fail to keep the ball at this level.
Equally perhaps I’m talking bollocks!
The structures are there, talent is identified from 11 years to 16s, but UK scouts will only consider big athletic players, if we do unearth our own Iniesta / Xavi he will have to make a huge impact in League of Ireland or get a very unlikely lucky break ion the continent
You’re not Larry, on the money as usual…
Why thank you mick
We’re talking about two different things Larry. You’re talking about exposure to different footballing philosophies as a factor in success while I’m talking about playing at a high level. In terms of the point you’re making, surely the FAI would have to both employ foreign youth coaches nationwide and forge links with clubs in the major european leagues?
As mick said if we cannot produce our own players would be preferable if we had more continental scouts rather than just all our players moving to England. Skillful players may be overlooked also by EPL scouts as he mentioned in favour of more physcial player but even if they do make it there the culture doesn’t seem to encourage football which would benefit Ireland. Option is always there to move later in careers I suppose.
Some Irish youngsters struggle with English. They arent going to go to a place where French or Spanish is spoken. Sad but true.
Plenty of other countries have players playing their trade in England yet they can slot/revert to the national style when called up. It’s the formative years that are important in this Larry, not when they move across the water at 16+
I don’t know about the rest of the country but I don’t see much in way development in Limerick. A few of the standout players are called up to Kennedy cup etc but in this day in age that’s not good enough. There should be more regional development officers in place with a strategy in place.
I don’t agree with that, playing in a foreign side’s youth team for 3 to 4 years where they train every day on tactical and technical aspects and are utilised in systems that require calmness and ability on the ball would make a huge difference. It will alter a completely different outlook on the way they play with the ball. At 16 there is still plenty of time to develop, I do take on board your points that it would be useful to get these lads ingrained in a better philosophy in their starting years but if they went off to Britain at 16 they would just be reverted to type and that would be that. The British Leagues don’t cater for technical players who don’t run around like headless chickens. I fully believe Paddy McCourt would have been a superstar if he was Italian.
It’s an interesting one … Liverpool basically have the Barcelona model in place in the academy, with their old youth coaches too, yet once they get to the senior team that model goes out the window. England is finally learning tho and more and more of the academies are installing the European model.
However, In reality, It’s around the age of 8 or so that are vital to starting development … Of course they can still learn at 16, but youre adapting then. Whereas from a young age, like in Holland, It’s a mind set.
Both matter imo
a mate of mine played league of Ireland back in mid 90’s i remember asking him why it was so bad to watch…he said that the funny thing was that there was so many quality players throughout the league and when you saw them train they had serious talent…but teams never seemed to give eachother a chance to play…everythiong was done at 100 miles an hour, ball in the air the whole time…it was more a mentality within the league that you had to get stuck in first, play ball second…