Republic of Ireland V Greece - Wednesday, 14th November 2012 - Friendly

[shakermaker1982]

Well, we have a comparable population to Uruguay and they seem to manage. There was a great piece in Four Four Two about a year ago on their youth systems. Great read. (albeit they don't have the GAA codes & Rugby to compete with)

Its funny you say about the next Duff, by that I understand, when will the English academy system fix this for us. But the present squad contains as many ex L.O.I players, or players largely forged in L.O.I. & players who chose Ireland despite not being born here as it does English academy products surely? I don't know the exact breakdown, but isn't the Keane/Duff/Dunne type produced player a diminishing resource for us at present at least ?

I picked out Duffer because he is skillful and for a couple of seasons in his prime one of the best players in Europe (position wise). He joined Blackburn when he was 17/18 so his skills weren't honed exclusively in the UK. From the age of 5 onwards a coach somewhere in Dublin worked with Duffer and Keane and these two players have gone on to great things. We've got to start with the kids that are 5/6/7 and have a system in place which develops them up to senior level. Yes we are still producing footballers but they aren't of a good enough standard. The current squad is made up of a lot of Championship players which isn't good enough IMO.

What are Switzerland and Belgium doing right? Can we copy them? Do our coaches ever get to visit the academies over in Ajax and Barcelona?

[DeLorean]

i dont think anyone would travel if they were not getting satisfaction out of the trip. and if that satisfaction comes out of their desire to purely support the team then good luck to them. I dont think anyone would ever let on travelling to support the team is a chore no matter what their motivation is for travelling.

Not sure. Say when we lost 5-2 to Cyprus, there were angry fans being interviewed after the match. They were saying things along the lines of "we go all over the world and spend loads of money following the Irish team and deserve better". Don't get me wrong, I fully agree that we deserve better than getting stuffed by the likes of Cyprus and having managers like Steve Staunton, I just wouldn't use the fact that I travel to games as a stick to beat anybody with ie. players, management or FAI. I have travelled because I want to travel. Yes, it's becasue the Irish team are playing there but it's for my own pleasure/satisfaction. I know going out there the result may be a disappointing one.

Same with the Euros. All the Roy Keane's in the world couldn't convince me that I deserved better than the performances the Irish team produced. It would have been great if they had done better but I'll be forever grateful Trap and his team for giving me one of the greatest experiences of my life. Not grateful enough to hit the big smoke for a midweek friendly mind you :D

[tricky_colour]

Actually watching it now against my better judgement. It's half time and I thought Brady looked good and is going to be hugely influential for us in the future. I loved Clark's tackle - get into them lad - a touch of the Roy Keanes bout that tackle. O'Shea did some good things but people don't tend to notice the good stuff strangely. Very flat performance and atmosphere though. When i was, ahem, a superfan (like some here) that went to every game it was always a full house, sad to see the deterioration.

McClean played like an ill-informed loudmouth, obviously...

I think a lot of people have their judgement clouded by the result rather than the performance.
For example people complain about a lack of passion but there seemed to be more passion in say
Clark's tackle than I have seen from an Irish player for a long time. I saw quite a lot of positives
in the game, I saw a few negatives as well but I think if we learn from them we are looking a very decent side.
I know O'Shea got some criticism for the goal but I thought it was a well worked move more due
to good forward play than bad defending. You would expect a drop in attendance after the disappointing
Euros, especially for a friendly, there have been more matches than usually recently.
McClean would perhaps to do better if he concentrated more on his game than twitter.

I looked at Greece's recent away record and it was won 10 drawn 4 lost 1, the loss being to Germany,so
I think a 1-0 defeat where we should have had a penalty is not that bad a result.
I'd like to see some stats for the game. And I have found some.
Greece have not lost an away friendly in their last 6 games (4 -2 - 0).
Also Greece are better away from home:
Home 27 W11.0 D10 L6.0
Away 23 W12.0 D7 L4.0

They got the same number of points away (43) playing 4 games less!! (impressive!)

Can't find any match stats but I think we were ahead on possession shots and corners etc.

[the bear]

I pretty much knew the guy you were on about before I googled it for confirmation! I think you might be on to something there...

http://www.fussballtransfers.com/bilder/a/kyriakos-papadopoulos-koennte-schalke-04-noch-verlassen_30431.jpg

Looks like he just wandered out of Godskitchen in The Point Depot

[DeLorean]

Bumping thread


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppGQnuyAni0

[Stuttgart88]

Why all this thread bumping?

[DeLorean]

Why all this thread bumping?

http://foot.ie/threads/211920-International-games-match-threads

[tetsujin1979]

Why all this thread bumping?

DeLoran's increasing his post count.

[DeLorean]

Closed thread.