Believe it or not, Irish clubs have never had it so good

[A face]

Believe it or not, Irish clubs have never had it so good. The onus will be on League of Ireland clubs to sustain the competition's huge leaps in Europe this week. Bear with the following statement now: we've just witnessed a golden age for Irish domestic soccer.

Granted, the balance sheets and business headlines that propelled it may absolutely scream otherwise and render that age fool's gold. But consider this. The Uefa coefficient league ranking is based on the last five years of continental competition. In 2004, when the current cycle started, the League of Ireland was 40th of 53 European leagues. It is now 30th, the third biggest leap in that period. Only the Romanian (17 places to ninth) and Russian (15 places to sixth) leagues enjoyed greater leaps.


Read more at www.tribune.ie (http://www.tribune.ie/sport/soccer/article/2009/jul/12/believe-it-or-not-irish-clubs-have-never-had-it-so/)
By Miguel Delaney

[Duggie]

ya but where will it be in the next 5 years....

[CJTheGull]

ya but where will it be in the next 5 years....

Probably in 52nd position, just behind Andorra but slightly ahead of the Vatican City :eek:

[osborne]

Surely the "never mind the balance sheet, look how we're doing in Europe" attitude is the whole reason that the league is virtually banjaxed.

[Joseph McSweene]

Makes Brian Kerr's recent comments all the more annoying-what more does he want? Clubs ruining themseleves to improve in Europe and there has been results-we're the third most improved league in Europe-I don't see what could've been done differently.

At this stage we should ignore Europe anyway, whats the point? It doesn't earn us any money really, it's causing us financial problems and it's pretty clear UEFA don't really care about the smaller leagues anyway at the end of the day. European away trips are great fun, and we've all enjoyed them when they come about but at this stage-it'd be better to concentrate on sorting out the debt and tax issues surrounding every club and trying to refocus engeries wasted on wages and european competition back into infrastructure and the realignment of the lower elchelons on the game in Ireland with the senior level.