Yeah Cyprus have a lot of Russian money and are ahead of the likes of Sweden, Denmark, Turkey, and Poland. Definitely not the best comparison.
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Yeah Cyprus have a lot of Russian money and are ahead of the likes of Sweden, Denmark, Turkey, and Poland. Definitely not the best comparison.
Granted, but don’t you think you may have stumbled across a large part of the problem there ? We all want our teams to do better in Europe ( no real evidence that this would result in bigger crowds for league games btw) but one of the keys to improvement is definitely more support. If people want to concentrate exclusively on the National team, all well and good, but it’s no use crying about how bad the league is in that case.Quote:
Originally Posted by third policeman
If LOI rounds were full every week what kind of improvement would we get? Marginal at best. We’d still be losing players to 3rd and 4th tier English clubs and smaller SPL clubs. There seems to a prevailing view that the LOI is about as good as it gets for this country. The level of interest in the sport and the size of our population mean it could be very different, but not without major structural change and infrastructure.Quote:
Originally Posted by TonyD
Well, if grounds were full regularly then infrastructure would surely improve. And I’d love to know what this structural change is that will magically transform the league. The only suggestion I’m seeing so far is to merge four of the best supported teams in the country into two, thereby wiping out a few thousand supporters who actually go to games. I actually think we need to expand the Premier Division. If teams like Waterford and Galway were regulars in the premier it would grow the interest in those towns.Quote:
Originally Posted by third policeman
I've noted elsewhere on this forum that 21 members of Croatia's 2018 World Cup squad started their senior careers in the Croatian league (many spending multiple seasons there) where the average attendance is about 3000, which isn't that much higher than the LOI. So if LOI clubs were selling out regularly (particularly Rovers, Cork City, Bohemians in their new stadium and Derry in an expanded Brandywell) then I think they would be able to hang on to young talent for longer and give them the first-team football at a decent level that is so crucial for players in their late teens and early twenties and probably would be successful in keeping them away from most 3rd and 4th tier English clubs.Quote:
Originally Posted by third policeman
Maybe but it’s a lot easier for Croatia to keep players in their domestic league because there is nowhere else for them to go at that stage. Unfortunately our proximity to England, and to a lesser extent Scotland, means that our younger players do have options other than developing or staying in the LOI.
Pretty much every country is Europe has a similar statistic.
Croatia is in the EU and it is just as easy for their players to sign for top Premier League sides.
Isn't there a lot of Croatian players in Italy?
Probably so, but the vast majority of Croatian players still start in their domestic league before moving abroad.
We're an anomaly in that regard. Wasn't there a recent UEFA report that had us as number one in Europe for sending under 18s abroad? That's in absolute terms; not pro-rata.
Well he does have a point about our proximity to England. Lads would jet off at 16 to train in a professional environment because they weren't getting it here, whereas other countries like Croatia will keep their young players at home longer because they're getting the training that's needed at home.
It's the biggest issue with Brexit that if we don't improve things big time at home and lads aren't getting the training needed in a professional environment then we'd have been better off asking FIFA to still let lads move at 16 so they would get the training needed in a professional environment.
FAI need to pull the finger out and get a full time academy up and going where the best youngesters in the country can train to the same standard as they would in a UK academy. Unfortunately LOI clubs will never be able to offer that without massive investment so the FAI need to step up and do something. FFS the IFA have a full time academy for lads between the ages of 14 - 16 that was funded by Uefa I think to get it up and running.
i think we need to stop seeing Brexit as a bad thing and see it as an opportunity to be honest. The league would be much better off if we could keep top players until the were 21, not 16. The transfer fees clubs could demand for them could be much bigger too, again to our benefit.
There's a hell of a lot of work to be done, and probably in the short term, Brexit is going to be damaging. But really if we're honest, it's not Brexit that's damaging for us, but our own complete failure to develop any sort of functioning professional domestic football setup. All Brexit has done is highlight that for us.
I'm all for Brexit but it's only a benefit if the FAI start investing and raising standards here to a professional level for young players. That's without even getting into improving the senior side of the game here so young lads have somewhere to play rather than jumping on the first boat at 18 instead of 16. The best of the best will probably still be off at 18 but the league needs to improve for those that will stick around between 18 - 21.Quote:
Originally Posted by pineapple stu
Brexit has definitely helped highlight this on a bigger stage but everything that has gone on with the national team has helped too. Think it was after the draw with Azerbaijan that people were talking about youth development and us being one of four nations that hasn't got a full time employee in an academy at club level. The others being Andorra, Northern Ireland, and Luxembourg but the IFA and Luxembourg FA have full time academies of their own.
Yep, for sure the fact that the FAI - 25 years after the Premier League started taking players from all parts of the world - has still done feck all to develop a proper pathway is an issue at the moment. And it's worrying for our future prospects.
Of course, the flip side is that there's a clear link between the Bosman ruling (ending the three-foreigners rule) and the decline of the Irish national team's fortunes. It wasn't immediate - clubs needed time to find foreigners, and we still had more than our fair share of players in the youth structure over there anyway. But since the late 90s, there's been a consistent decline in the number of Irish players in the Premier League, and it's effectively what's led us to the current state where we're losing to Luxembourg and drawing with Azerbaijan. (There's other factors that influence those specific results of course - Robinson not getting a vaccine, Kenny maybe not being the person to get the most out of the national team, etc, but we were clearly on a steady decline for years beforehand and it didn't take much to turn a 1-0 win over Gibraltar or draws in Georgia into bad defeats)
Players staying until 21 would be good for the league, but would it be good for the players?Quote:
Originally Posted by pineapple stu
I know we lament the fact that some our best players head off at 16 to learn hoof ball at Hull or wherever, but I would imagine they are still receiving better training than if they’d stayed at home.
The chances of getting to the point where it is better for both the LOI and the player is pretty remote I would say.
I think there's a study which has shown it's generally worse for a player's development to leave home so early. Not sure where I saw that, so happily retracted if invented, but that'd be one factor.
It'd surely be better for the majority who don't make it in England to have stayed here and finished an education, and they have to be considered too.
The LoI is a long way away from being of the required standard, sure. But why can most other leagues manage it? Why are we such an anomaly?
Yer man Jonathan Hill is now active on Twitter. Seems like a very level headed guy. Surely it can't have gone unnoticed by him just how cool the Lux stadium is? Every big town in Ireland should have something like this, and a running track adjacent.
Just need to find €80m down the back of the sofa now to build all these.Quote:
Originally Posted by Stuttgart88
Would’ve been great if they didn’t fine that girl €3k for running up to RonaldoQuote:
Originally Posted by Stuttgart88
Everyone should have a Golden Circle !Quote:
Originally Posted by JR89
Will it ever be paid ?Quote:
Originally Posted by Fixer82
99% think i heard the FAI confirm she wouldn't be fined.Quote:
Originally Posted by seanfhear
the FAI confirmed no fine would be levied (I myself would not be so lenient as it will encourage others)..Quote:
Originally Posted by seanfhear
Well, there was 33% cost overrun, we can do those without blinking.Quote:
Originally Posted by JR89
How good was Duff in hindsight do people think?
Brilliant, one of our very best I reckon.
When was his peak for us? 2002 to perhaps 2005?
He was very talented but wasn't as important for Ireland as good old Tony Galvin. Both were very good at dribbling past defenders, but Galvin was more prominent for the national team, when he played. Duff problems were the clubs he chose after Blackburn, while Galvin was a Spurs stalwart for 12 years in a row, very impressive player too, so flashy like Duff. Then some brainy made Duff play as left back, the farther Duff was from the box the less effective as footballer he became,
Duff and Robbie Keane both broke through in 1997, 6 years after Roy Keane arrived on the scene and a full quarter of a century ago this year. The last genuinely top class players this country produced.
What went so wrong?
Bosman.
I don't think it's a coincidence that the number of Irish players at Premier League clubs has steadily declined since Bosman (and the three foreigner rule, which I think was contemporaneous)
Plus unlike most other major nations in Europe, we've never developed a serious professional alternative here. We put all our eggs in one basket, and then got dumped.
The FAI never moved on from the 90s and thought the English teams would still develop our talent even once the PL became this global juggernaut with cash to burn.Quote:
Originally Posted by Trequartista20
That's so interesting to see how proximate Keane and Duff's development and emergence was to Roy Keane's. Absolutely crazy to think we haven't produced a player even close to them since. All those DDSL teams, all those Kennedy Cup teams. Just shows how good it is to be elite at this sport.
In my top 5 favorite Irish players ever. He was fantasticQuote:
Originally Posted by irishultra
And just dream of how much better he could have been had he been luckier with injuries.
There was a moment against Spain in 2002 where Duff, flat on his back, keeps the ball from three pressing Spanish players, gets to his feet, and beats them in the dribble. He was the most technically gifted player I've ever seen play for us by some distance. If he'd developed as a finisher, he'd have been absolutely world class.Quote:
Originally Posted by irishultra
Player: one of our best.Quote:
Originally Posted by irishultra
Diver: world class.
Walker: silver medal
Currently: Gerry Doyle wannabe.
The guy was brilliant in every sense of the world. For me, he's up there with McGrath and both Keanes as the best player of the past thirty odd years. For the guy blaming the FAI for not developing players and all that, I'd say that a country of our size is due a truly great player once every twenty or thirty years. We have some good players that could turn into Premier League regulars, but one of these years, a guy will come along in the underage squads and take our breath away. I remember reading about James McCarthy training with Barcelona and Liverpool as a fifteen or sixteen year old. Terry Dixon at Spurs, Conor Clifford at Chelsea. One day, hopefully soon, one of these kids is going to come out of nowhere and impress everyone.
there is a 2 or 3 min video of duffs best bits against spain 2002 on youtube. well worth a look to remind ourselves how good he was.Quote:
Originally Posted by John83
think he was at his peak in 2002, the move to chelsea seemed to knock a bit of the flair from him
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGnw0rh58UsQuote:
Originally Posted by jbyrne
He really did con the ref for that penalty looking back at it.
The first post on this thread from 2003 gives a good idea of the kind of company he was able to mix it with at the time, and he really was at that level at that point.
I don't remember TV footage being that grainy as recently as 2002 though, I know it was before the digital switchover but hopefully I'm not imagining that the picture quality was a lot better than that!Quote:
Originally Posted by Real ale Madrid
For us his peak began September 2001 v Netherlands, I don't remember when it ended but at some stage when he was at Chelsea he lost that ability to effortlessly dribble past a defender, you began to see more offloads etc.Quote:
Originally Posted by irishultra