FAI are Slaves to English Football

[TheBoss]

That is according to Johnny Glynn, manager of Mervue United who gave an interview to a french based website:

It is translated about half way down.

http://www.be-celt.com/2013/03/25/johnny-glynn-lirlande-est-lesclave-du-football-anglais/

[poster]

Who's the Shams player to the left of McBrien and Russell in the photo?

[Joe Strummer]

Graham Barrett

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_Barrett

[OwlsFan]

What does he mean by "The FAI are happy to be slaves to the English game"? What is the sense in making a remark like that and not explaining it.

He also states " The only thing I can say about the National team is that Mr Trappatoniand his backroom teams combined salary would quadruple the investment that is made in developing Irish football". Apart from the fact that half of that is paid by Denis O'Brien, where does he think that the money for investment will come from unless the national team is successful. Chicken and egg situation. Perhaps we should have hired Paul Jewell as advocated by Giles/Dunphy and recently sacked by Ipswich.

These sort of generalisations without expansion are irritating. Ok, probably not room in the piece but perhaps a sentence more or two.

Graham Barrett had a brief spell as a slave at Sheffield Wednesday.

[SeanDrog]

My opinion is that the FAI let the English game and hence style lead our destiny . The FAI do nothing to change the pattern of most of our talent going to the uk.

Imagine if they created a scholarship scheme to place 50-100 teens each year in Ajax, Barcelona , Real Masrid, Milan etc. the FAI would pay these academy's to take the irish guys but these clubs would also get first call on signing them if they like what they see. End result we start developing players not instilled with the English game style which at international level is struggling.

Just my thoughts .

[A N Mouse]

What does he mean by "The FAI are happy to be slaves to the English game"? What is the sense in making a remark like that and not explaining it.

He also states " The only thing I can say about the National team is that Mr Trappatoniand his backroom teams combined salary would quadruple the investment that is made in developing Irish football". Apart from the fact that half of that is paid by Denis O'Brien, where does he think that the money for investment will come from unless the national team is successful. Chicken and egg situation. Perhaps we should have hired Paul Jewell as advocated by Giles/Dunphy and recently sacked by Ipswich.

These sort of generalisations without expansion are irritating. Ok, probably not room in the piece but perhaps a sentence more or two.

Graham Barrett had a brief spell as a slave at Sheffield Wednesday.

The article seems to have changed - the title is now "Irish clubs do not have the means to succeed" and I see no mention of the national team.

However, even without context, I don't see how the part about slaves to the english game could be misconstrued. (All the eggs having been put in one basket the chickens are now coming home to roost.)

We're zealots on here for pointing it out, but the national league is suddenly developing nearly half the international squad - despite the almost willful ignorance of the fai and the majority of irish football fans. Extrapolate!

[bennocelt]

What does he mean by "The FAI are happy to be slaves to the English game"? What is the sense in making a remark like that and not explaining it.

He also states " The only thing I can say about the National team is that Mr Trappatoniand his backroom teams combined salary would quadruple the investment that is made in developing Irish football". Apart from the fact that half of that is paid by Denis O'Brien, where does he think that the money for investment will come from unless the national team is successful. Chicken and egg situation. Perhaps we should have hired Paul Jewell as advocated by Giles/Dunphy and recently sacked by Ipswich.

These sort of generalisations without expansion are irritating. Ok, probably not room in the piece but perhaps a sentence more or two.

.

Unless your thick or part of the ole ole brigade - its obvious!:o
The way things are going at the moment it seems the national team need the LOI more than the other way round.

[Charlie Darwin]

I thought his point was fairly obvious and well-considered. The FAI plays approximately no role in player development and actively ignores the domestic league it technically runs. This can be clearly contrasted to the pro-active stance of the French FA, which promotes player development in spite of a well-developed domestic academy structure and a strong league. If you're going to produce elite players, you have to be prepared to put the structures in place and the FAI simply isn't.

[ArdeeBhoy]

The French have rather more money in their domestic game. By virtue of being a rather bigger country, with more fans...
And less other distractions in terms of team sports.

[nigel-harps1954]

The French have rather more money in their domestic game. By virtue of being a rather bigger country, with more fans...
And less other distractions in terms of team sports.

So, this money you speak of, did it just fall from the sky?
Put an extra 3,000 people into Irish grounds each week and we'd have a much healthier league.

[peadar1987]

I like the assumption that the Irish would follow and support the Breton clubs in France, whereas in reality, the majority of Irish people would have no idea that Bretagne has a Celtic connection.

[nigel-harps1954]

And Celtic have an Irish connection. It's a crazy circle.

[gormacha]

.....

[Dodge]

What the issue here? Irish people, in general, are slaves to English football. The most supported sports team in Ireland isn't Munster/Leinster in the rugby or even Dublin/Cotk in the GAA. It's Man Utd and the next 2 are Liverpool and Celtic.

The FAI are made up, in general, by these same people.

[Comic Book Guy]

Nights like last night will continue to happen as long as we send our kids across the water. The time for a sea change in the way players are coached and taught in this country was at least 20 years ago. I like the idea of trying to send our best kids to the continent for coaching (fanciful I know) because we are so deficient in trying to keep the ball that it's embarrassing. Are our kids inherently inferior to kids in Europe? No.
I often wonder is there a bigger influence from the GAA in how we play football in this island than we realise? By that I mean when you see a GAA player (particularly a back) in possession his instinct is to get rid of the ball asap.
By the way I'm not having a go at the GAA here but is it possible the culture of how we play other team sports in this island influences our thinking in approach to football? Jt

[Jofspring]

Over the past twenty years the decline in Irish players playing for top English sides has also been huge. We are relying too much on English sides to bring through our internationals or at least have been for the last 20 years even though in recent times most have been released by the time they get near the first teams and end up plying their trade in the championship. Our over reliance on the English system is our downfall. Smaller countries than ours have caught up and passed us out because they have developed within their own systems and not relied on other countries to do it for them.

On the point of money needs to come from the international team for development. Surely a successful LOI with better support means more money coming in, more money coming in means better structures in our own clubs, better players coming through our system and better players going on to international this making a stronger international team and more money coming in that way also. You simply can't just hope good players will come out of nowhere and make the international team successful.

[outspoken]

Nights like last night will continue to happen as long as we send our kids across the water. The time for a sea change in the way players are coached and taught in this country was at least 20 years ago. I like the idea of trying to send our best kids to the continent for coaching (fanciful I know) because we are so deficient in trying to keep the ball that it's embarrassing. Are our kids inherently inferior to kids in Europe? No.
I often wonder is there a bigger influence from the GAA in how we play football in this island than we realise? By that I mean when you see a GAA player (particularly a back) in possession his instinct is to get rid of the ball asap.
By the way I'm not having a go at the GAA here but is it possible the culture of how we play other team sports in this island influences our thinking in approach to football? Jt

I would agree with that statement as I've had a lot of friends who were excellent athletes and would have made great players but never did because they simply didnt have any football intelligence, they had a very GAA mentality, hit hard, hoof long.

[ArdeeBhoy]

So, this money you speak of, did it just fall from the sky?
Put an extra 3,000 people into Irish grounds each week and we'd have a much healthier league.

Not if they all went to one club.
There is no comparison really between French & Irish club soccer at the top level, there are many other European countries, eg. in Scandinavia or E.Europe, where the numbers are much closer.

[SeanDrog]

The gaa point is interesting, I've never thought of it that way.

[A N Mouse]

Not if they all went to one club.
There is no comparison really between French & Irish club soccer at the top level, there are many other European countries, eg. in Scandinavia or E.Europe, where the numbers are much closer.

You're still (willfully?) missing the point.

Nobody, other than yourself, is seeking to compare french (or any other) domestic football with our own national league.

It's the player development model employed by the associations.

The french are proactive, whereas the fai are happy to leave it to someone else. Anyone else really - mostly foreign clubs. But increasingly domestic clubs, playing in the widely neglected and oft derided national league.

[ArdeeBhoy]

Hardly.

Am addressing the points of three other posters, who made direct comparison with the French...

[marinobohs]

Nights like last night will continue to happen as long as we send our kids across the water. The time for a sea change in the way players are coached and taught in this country was at least 20 years ago. I like the idea of trying to send our best kids to the continent for coaching (fanciful I know) because we are so deficient in trying to keep the ball that it's embarrassing. Are our kids inherently inferior to kids in Europe? No.
I often wonder is there a bigger influence from the GAA in how we play football in this island than we realise? By that I mean when you see a GAA player (particularly a back) in possession his instinct is to get rid of the ball asap.
By the way I'm not having a go at the GAA here but is it possible the culture of how we play other team sports in this island influences our thinking in approach to football? Jt

We dont 'send' our kids across the water they run screaming and kicking at the first nod from an English/Scottish club. And they do not go for the coaching either - offer state of the art coaching in Ireland OR a contract at any EPL club and see how many kids are concerned with coaching.

We should be sending our coaches to European clubs, but instead have badges delivered by coaches wedded to the 'English' style of play - all hioping to discover/develop the next big thing in, yes you guessed it, the EPL . Crap teachers invariably make crap students

[A N Mouse]

Hardly.

Am addressing the points of three other posters, who made direct comparison with the French...

I must have missed the bit where you replied to specific points.

You clumsily sidestepped the points raised by the one poster who responded to your initial derail. And seemingly ignored the rest of the thread.

[OwlsFan]

Unless your thick or part of the ole ole brigade - its obvious!:o
The way things are going at the moment it seems the national team need the LOI more than the other way round.

I don't really appreciate receiving pejorative personal messages from someone whom I would say has attended far less LOI games than I ever have. If following Ireland home and away since the early 1970s make me part of the Ole Ole brigage, so be it.

Again, I repeat the point that making a statement that the FAI is a slave to the English game without saying why to readers, many of whom would not be familiar with the Irish league, is meaningless. The fact that the best local players go to England does not make the FAI slave to the English game. Even if the local sides were attracting crowds of 20K, the better players would still go to where they would earn more money (i.e. England) as do much of the cream of Europe as well as the better Scottish, Welsh and Northern Ireland players. Are their organisations also slaves to the English game? Even players of massive clubs like Celtic and Rangers go south.

Not investing in the local game is an allied issue but with the FAI Council made up of primarily local football people, one must wonder are they doing all that they can or if not, why? Obviously most people here think they aren't but I can tell you the FAI as an organisation has improved 100 fold from what I remember it used to be, and no I am not John Delaney in disguise. The investment must come from their primary income generator, the international side and hence a lot of money has been invested in the manager etc (whether wisely is discussed in other forums) and thus I raised the question about Glynn's barbed comments about the money being spent on the international side. As I said chicken and egg situation.

p.s. nigel-harps1954 and SkStu I love you too and keep liking each others posts. It will make you feel good.

[nigel-harps1954]

p.s. nigel-harps1954 and SkStu I love you too and keep liking each others posts. It will make you feel good.


It makes me feel wonderful.

[A face]

We should be sending our coaches to European clubs, but instead have badges delivered by coaches wedded to the 'English' style of play - all hioping to discover/develop the next big thing in, yes you guessed it, the EPL . Crap teachers invariably make crap students

Where to though? Spain? Italy? How would a junior club even go about equipping themselves with the ability to coach technical football that is taught elsewhere (not EPL). Its not like there is a one stop shop for all their needs anywhere.

Agreed on the crap teachers, but the teachers union (FAI) are a million years away from changing their thinking on the game and how its approached here.

[MariborKev]

Never mind being slaves to English football, Irish people are in general slaves to all things English.....

With the new TMS kids can transfer intra-Europe after the age of 16 anyway, so if they were good enough they would be going to the clubs mentioned. The idea of the FAI paying for players to be played at European clubs is ludicrous anyway. If that investment was ever mooted it should be in capital expenditure and the development of such a facility on Irish soil.

As someone alluded to before, offer a kid/parent a chance of state of the art coaching here or a academy/scholar place in the EPL and in the vast majority of cases they'll be off before you can get the door closed. However, we had a case recently where a parent/player were keen to stay as they thought that the LOI was a much better route to development than heading across the water, despite significant interest. It was heartening to see.

[ArdeeBhoy]

I must have missed the bit where you replied to specific points.

You clumsily sidestepped the points raised by the one poster who responded to your initial derail. And seemingly ignored the rest of the thread.

Hardly. And you may need to top up on the numeracy front.
;)

[Macy]

Irish football needs a total restructure, if the aim is to ultimately develop top class players for the National team. There should be a national academy, like the French have. It has nothing to do with attendances or money in the French league in comparison to the League of Ireland. It will never happen here - the school boy leagues have too much voting power in the FAI. Look at how young we start competitive football leagues compared to other European countries who develop skillfull players.

Yes, the very best players will ultimately move abroad, but there's no need for it to be at 16, as a lot of our current National team show. The route should be local team --> national academy --> national league --> national team.

[osarusan]

Yes, the very best players will ultimately move abroad, but there's no need for it to be at 16, as a lot of our current National team show. The route should be local team --> national academy --> national league --> national team.

How good would the national league have to be to be a better option than England, from the player's perspective? Is the national league, ever in our wildest dreams, ever going to be able to compete with even the Championship as a league?

[Macy]

The very best players will still go, but we wouldn't be losing the 90% who don't currently make it, think 'dream over' and give up playing to any reasonable standard. And if we had a proper development structure in place, chances are more players would be at top clubs, not less. If we get the player development structure right, it's inevitable the standard of the league will improve. I wouldn't make any.claims about how that.would translate in crowds or money - barstoolers will always make bogus excuses for not supporting the league.