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If they haven't then FAI should be hounding UEFA about getting involved with the Elite Youth Academy Programme they've set up which helps countries set up and run their own elite youth academy. Israel, Finland, and Northern Ireland have been a part of it since 2019.
It must run for five years because the first three countries to receive funding were North Macedonia, Georgia, and Armenia in 2014.
https://www.uefa.com/insideuefa/news...-uefa-support/
Can be corrected on this, but there had been long-term plans for a national residential academy at Abbotstown but these plans were abandoned (or postponed) in the past year or so in favour of a more regionalised approach through a LOI academy umbrella.Quote:
Originally Posted by JR89
Further strengthen the need for the FAI to be all over this like a fly on **** the Israel U19s that finished runners up and qualifed for their first U20s WC beat Brazil yesterday 3-2 to advance to the semi finals. Has been a decent couple of years for Israel since setting up their national academy through the Elite Youth Academy Programme.Quote:
Originally Posted by JR89
https://www.buzz.ie/sport/soccer/sha...uture-30196856
Good article this on the developing Irish underage structures.
We did indeed go on to beat the Ajax u-15s. There's been some serious scalps taken in the past year or so especially.Quote:
Originally Posted by nigel-harps1954
" Goodness Ogbonna, Ade Solanke, Mohammad Oladiti, Charles Akinrintoyo, Max Kovalevskis are some of the names to remember." I'll try but it ain't easy!Quote:
Originally Posted by nigel-harps1954
Article on Marc Canham's plans...
https://www.irishtimes.com/sport/soc...uture-success/
How will Ireland plan to develop future international stars?
Director of football Marc Canham to tackle system with December white paper
Gavin Cummiskey
Wed Oct 11 2023
In September, Andy Moran introduced himself to the wider football world. Two goals and two neat assists in the 5-2 EFL Cup defeat of Cardiff City showed Blackburn Rovers that their season-long loan from Brighton and Hove Albion is a special midfielder.
Further evidence of the 19-year-old’s quality was also evident at Turners Cross last month when the Republic of Ireland’s under-21 skipper scored from a wonderful volley against Turkey.
Moran almost slipped through the net. Brighton were hesitant to sign a skinny 16-year-old after Bray Wanderers spent two seasons cautiously exposing him to men’s football. The relationship between the Seagulls’ former academy boss John Morling and the FAI prompted the Premier League club to take a chance. Within weeks, Brighton were describing him as “the most un-Irish player” in terms of technical ability.
Coaches tell parents that every teenager’s pathway into professional football is different, yet a clear pattern exists between Ireland and England.
The gold standard is Evan Ferguson, who leaped from St Kevin’s Boys to Bohemians, making his senior debut against Chelsea at 14 before signing for Brighton and Hove Albion in January 2021. Ferguson avoided Brexit rules, that prohibit Irish talent joining a British club until they turn 18, due to his English mother.
If scoring a Premier League hat-trick at 18 is the extraordinary example, then Moran’s steady climb into the professional ranks offers a more realistic route.
The Dubliner represents the latest test case for the FAI’s player pathways. Under director of football Marc Canham, the association is keen to redesign the system with a white paper to be published in December that will outline how specific Fifa and Uefa funding is required to ensure that “high-potential future internationals” are equipped for the road ahead.
Take the example of Mason Melia. His journey began at St Josephs AFC in Sallynoggin, before a League of Ireland academy, in this case St Patrick’s Athletic, came calling. Melia, now 16, came through the system and graduated to become the youngest ever League of Ireland goalscorer at 15 years and 281 days.
But the likes of St Pat’s need more resources to assist with Melia’s development. Seemingly, help is coming from the FAI.
However, the majority of Irish boys are in the Moran mould. Not physically developed enough to play League of Ireland, but to remain at home is to deny themselves crucial coaching hours. On average, contact time for Irish under-17s is 260 minutes per week whereas a category three English club academy offers up to 720 minutes.
The FAI’s short-term aim is to equip this raw talent with enough mental resilience and technical proficiency to excel in the professional game, if and when they leave Ireland. The association are also aware that the athletic development of their players remains a major weakness.
“By the time Irish boys get to 16 they are too far behind the best players in the world,” two coaches, working within the current system, separately informed The Irish Times.mute
The FAI accept that the traditional pathway of promising young players signing for top tier English clubs has almost disappeared, mainly because the Premier League has become a destination for elite global talent.
Any teenager who is signed by a Premier League club will almost certainly go on loan to the EFL Championship, a European feeder squad or League One. After representing the Republic of Ireland under-21s, an agent tends to deliver a permanent move to a Championship team, which leads to a senior international call-up. That, for the most part, is the end of the pathway as a relentless 50-game EFL campaign commences year upon gruelling year.
For players like Troy Parrott and Jake O’Brien, the path took them from relative obscurity at Premier League clubs to the lower English divisions and now Europe, in the Dutch and French leagues, where they are hoping to revive their careers via the Josh Cullen method. Cullen did so well for Vincent Kompany at Anderlecht that last season they arrived at Burnley as a manager-midfielder package.
Listening to Canham recently, it became clear that the problems facing the FAI around player development will take 10 years to be fully addressed.
The association also accepts the flawed nature of Kenny’s current squad largely existing outside the major European leagues. Last weekend six Irishmen – Ferguson, Nathan Collins, Josh Cullen, Chiedozie Ogbene, John Egan and Matt Doherty – featured in the Premier League, 27 appeared in the EFL Championship and 20 clocked minutes in League One.
In June 2022 and 2023, Ireland were badly exposed during defeats in Armenia and Athens following the six-week gap between the English second tier ending and the international window beginning. The problem appears unsolvable now, given the average Championship salary is reportedly £22,000 (€25,500) a week, making a move to leagues in Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, France or Portugal a poor financial decision.
The Canham paper will also include longer term ideas to amalgamate domestic academies with full-time education. The alternative is Shamrock Rovers’ privately-funded academy and how their relationship with Ashfield college helped nurture a teenage Gavin Bazunu before he joined Manchester City.
“If you do look at world football over many years and look at really high-ranking teams or teams with similar-sized populations [to Ireland], there is a direct correlation between the talent development and education system in terms of achieving that success,” said Canham before pointing to the examples of Belgium and Croatia.
In 1998, the Royal Belgium FA and government created eight specialist football schools that allowed players aged between 14 and 18 to train during the normal curriculum – two-hour sessions, four mornings a week – while living at home so they can access club training in the evening. When this system produced a golden generation, including Kevin De Bruyne and Thibaut Courtois, leading clubs began to link up with other schools in their community.
The IRFU have accessed a similar model, albeit via privately-funded schools, before their own provincial structures further develop the flow of talent.
“The FAI want the clubs to develop players which is nonsense,” said Harry McCue, the recently retired FAI-ETB (Education and Training Board) co-ordinator. “The clubs do not have the time, they do not have the personnel. What we proposed [to Canham] is soccer-specific schools.”
The Canham Plan is widely anticipated.
Post script to same article
xx
Irish Pathways to Professional Football
Troy Parrott
Born: Dublin
Age: 21
Position: Forward
Republic of Ireland: 20 caps, four goals.
Previous clubs: Belvedere FC, Tottenham Hotspur, Millwall, Ipswich Town, MK Dons, Preston North End.
Current club: Excelsior Rotterdam (on loan from Tottenham).
Middling loan moves to MK Dons and Preston, after bad experiences at Millwall and Ipswich, led him to Excelsior Rotrerdam in the Eredivisie, where he’s scored twice off the bench in successive appearances. An understandable decision to sign for Spurs at 15 has not worked out. Under contract until 2025, his only Premier League exposure was off the bench against Burnley in 2019 and Wolves in 2020. Despite important goals against Andorra, Lithuania and Scotland, Stephen Kenny dropped him from the senior Ireland squad last month.
Jake O’Brien
Born: Cork
Age: 22
Position: Centre back
Previous clubs: Cork City, Crystal Palace, Swindon Town (loan), RWD Molenbeek, Belgium (loan).
Current club: Olympique Lyonnais.
Eleven caps for Jim Crawford’s Irish under-21s alongside full internationals Aaron Connolly, Ferguson and Will Smallbone have yet to translate into regular club minutes. Having helped Molenbeek gain promotion to the top tier of Belgium football, he earned a move to France after his 2021/22 loan season at Swindon in League Two fell short of convincing Crystal Palace to extend his contract. Also played League of Ireland for Cork City in 2020. Despite Lyon’s winless start to Ligue 1, when the Youghal defender was benched behind three full internationals, Duje Caleta-Car (Croatia), Sinaly Diomandé (Ivory Coast) and Clinton Mata (Angola), his debut finally arrived recently in a 2-0 loss to Stade Reims.
Andy Moran
Andy Moran: the highly-rated Brighton midfielder has begun to catch the eye during his current loan deal at Blackburn Rovers, scoring twice against Cardiff City in the EFL Cup. Photograph: Dave Howarth/CameraSport via Getty Images
Born: Dublin
Age: 19
Position: Midfield
Previous clubs: Knocklyon United, St Josephs AFC, Bray Wanderers, Brighton and Hove Albion.
Current club: Blackburn Rovers (on loan from Brighton).
Coming of age at Ewood Park under Jon Dahl Tomasson. After a superb goal for the Ireland 21s against Turkey, Moran recently caught fire in the EFL Cup, scoring twice and creating two goals in the 5-2 defeat of Cardiff. Made his Premier League debut for Brighton against Everton in January 2023 before securing the loan to Blackburn where he is operating beside fellow Ireland-qualified attacking midfielder Sammie Szmodics.
Mason Melia
Born: Wicklow
Age: 16
Position: Forward
Previous clubs: Newtown Juniors, St Josephs AFC, Bray Wanderers.
Current club: St Patrick’s Athletic.
An early developer, 113 minutes off the bench across seven League of Ireland games this season, scoring twice and becoming the second youngest player to feature on the domestic front, behind a 14-year-old Evan Ferguson, so comparisons to the Brighton striker are inevitable. St Pat’s might get a second season from him or a conglomerate like City Football Group could swoop in and farm him out to one of their European clubs. Manchester City’s holding company also own Girona in La Liga, Lommel SK in Belgium’s second tier, ES Troyes AC in the French second division and Palermo of Serie B.
European Club Association(ECA) published a study on international migration of players in Europe
Ireland had the second highest amount of players transferred abroad as minors(219), just behind France(246), with England being the most common destination
Full report linked here: https://www.ecaeurope.com/news-media...ers-in-europe/
Gavin Bazunu, James McClean and Seamus Coleman are set to fund a new Scholarship Initiative for the League of Ireland
This fantastic initiative and gesture will see one boy & one girl put through education whilst full-time at a LOI club as a pilot.
https://x.com/IrelandFootball/status...199132526?s=20
First poets-in-residence, then climate officers but full time pilots at a LOI club? I’ve heard it all.
I was watching the long highlights of Uruguay v Brazil there and Uruguay are something to behold (Darwin Nunez was incredible). I know Croatia and Belgium are rightly held up as examples of what we could do - but I’d love us to look to Uruguay to see what we could learn. Population of 3.4m and they keep producing generations of excellent footballers. The one with Suarez and Cavani and Godin has past - but look at the new crop that have come through (age 25 and under):
Federico Valverde, Real Madrid, 25
Mathias Olivera, Napoli, 25
Darwin Nunez, Liverpool, 24
Ronald Araújo, Barcelona, 24
Manuel Ugarte, PSG, 22
Facundo Pellistri, United, 21
It’s not even one type of player that they produce or one build of player. You’ve got big centre halves, quick skilful wingers, do it all midfielders, every kind of striker imaginable.
Maybe there’s a point where teams start to look at you differently if you’re from a certain country that has a disproportionate rate of developing players. Like a high profile club might have been more likely to take a chance on Omobamidele if he were Uruguayan rather than irish.
Anyway… they’re doing something right in development of footballers, however they get there.
Meanwhile, at senior level, they’ve found $4m a year to pay Bielsa to manage them (about 7 times the salary of Kenny).
^ Perhaps success breeding success.
Also ~ I am going to take a guess that ~ Soccer is by far and away the biggest sport played in Uruguay.
And isn't there some mad stat that of something like 11 teams in their professional top flight, 10 are from Montevideo?
It's 12 clubs of 16, according to Wikipedia!Quote:
Originally Posted by Stuttgart88
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_U..._and_locations
Montevideo played the football stars ! ! !
Uruguay has a population of 3.4m. And according to this list*, 1.3m of them live in Montevideo.Quote:
Originally Posted by tetsujin1979
While the next most populous city is Salto - 100k, and the 10th most is Artigas, with 42k:
https://worldpopulationreview.com/co...cities/uruguay
* - Other sources say 1.75m - maybe they mean the greater metropolitan area?
A new pathway plan for football in Ireland has been announced
The plan itself can be downloaded here
https://d2w4iw8gs9jo14.cloudfront.ne...PP_2024_LR.pdf
The plan looks pretty promising. It will be hard to implement but good to see the effort to align the structures and have a joined up system. I'm glad I filled in the survey because it feels like they have listened to the feedback. It's all well and good having nice plans of paper though. Actually getting the leagues and particularly the schoolboy leagues on board will take some doing. I'm hoping by all the talks of the FAI club standards and league standards that will be a way of ensuring that funding only goes towards clubs that align to the plan and if you want to stay outside then you can't get funded/registered/involved in official leagues etc.
Quote:
Originally Posted by tetsujin1979
Thanks that was an interesting read. There really needs to be huge investment in uefa qualified coaches to ensure the best players get effective coaching and training.
I enjoyed seeing 5-11 year olds described as getting to just enjoy the game. I’ve seen a few clubs with u-8/10’s doing tactics and win at all costs. One thing I do like about GAA is the go games initiative. My local GAA club here in Meath has 90 4 years in an old weather pitch cage from March to October ! It’s an impressive site each Sunday morning.