If we qualify, how would we do in Germany?

[Donal81]

Something I've been thinking about. If the last two tournaments have showed us anything, it's that the old reputations of international football - Italy, France, England, Germany, Portugal, Spain - are no more. The balance of power is really shifting in that the old powers - old Europe, to paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld - possibly have too many great players playing too many matches for their clubs who they're too concerned about. In this era, what team should we really, really fear, if any? What countries could we never get a result against?

[wws]

first off Switzerland...I've a funny feeling we might soon be adding Israel to that list if we dont buck up several notches in performance levels - and Cyprus away wont be a walk in the park either

Bottom line - dont count your chickens....we had a LOT to prove in Basel and didnt in my opinion so lets "TAKE EVERY GAME AS IT COMES" before we start wondering about Germany!

[tetsujin1979]

The truth is, we can probably take on most teams on the planet, and (on our day) can compete very well with them, as recent (Brazil, Czechs, Holland) and historical (Italy in 94, Germany - then world champions - also in 94, England in 88) results have shown.

Add to that the fact that players play out of their skins at tournaments (Gary Breen!!) and it all adds up to the reasonable conclusion that we can do quite well.

However, we probably still cannot compete against the top 4 countries in the world on a competitive stage, but I could very easily see us into the quarters in 2 years time.

[Donal81]

True, we obviously have to get there first of all. I was concerned by the result in Switzerland when we couldn't put an inferior team away - we allowed them to look good. However, someone on this site pointed out that we've never done too well away from home in qualifiers, preferring to take the point and make sure we get them at home. It's when we fail to get them at home that the team fails overall. I think we can qualify, we have only ourselves to blame if we don't, we have enough quality players playing decent levels of football.

[Colm55]

i think that the only team we have to fear is ourselves, the thing i dislike most about our national team is how we can go out againat the top teams in europe and play so well against the likes of brazil,the czechs, in the past we've gotten results away from home in portugal, holland and spain, but its when we come to the minnows like macedonia or the like that we can't seem to reproduce the same form. and we end up drawing, we all remember the draw in macedonia or the nil all with litchenstein, its almost like these teams drag us down to their level, and then they grow in confidence, which in turn makes it harder on us.
I believe that we can and will get a result from any team like as tet..1979 said, but its ultimately up to ourselves to finish off the lower quality teams, to be in with a shout of getting to the major tournaments

[1MickCollins]

Twenty or thrity years ago there was a huge gap between say the No. 1 team in the world and No. 30 ( not that they had rankings then ) but that gap has shrunk dramtically. However the supporters in the old nations like Brazil, Italy, England & Germany still have the same huge expectations, that is our advantage - we really don't have to play under the same pressure once we get to a finals. People will continue to underestimate teams like Ireland. Of course we also have to aim high like the Greeks, they have shown the way - frankly in the last WC Spain were there for the taking, it should have been our major achievement.