Stephen Kenny

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Originally Posted by mark12345

I would say the population comparison is significant. How can Croatia (and indeed Uruguay) with similar population do infinitely better than us. It's all down to coaching. And while ours may have improved a bit, we're still not remotely close to these standards

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https://keepitonthedeck.com/blog/201...es-footballers

By coaching you mean developmental coaching through the age groups? Not coaching at the senior level right? I'd agree that we don't get the most out of our supply chain. Too many broken systems and competing parties unwilling to put players first to get the most out of a relatively small pool to begin with. There doesn't seem to be an easy fix there.

Even Kenny might get to a WC with Luka Modric in midfield. Barry would probably win it.

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Originally Posted by Eirambler

I think people are overestimating the standard of Croatia's domestic structures to be honest. Generally what their national team has achieved is done despite their domestic setup, not because of it.

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really? croatian clubs have produced good players for years tbh. lots of exposure in uefa youth leagues over the years aswell. vast majority of the current senior squad all had at least one full season of croatian football under their belts before going to other euro clubs.

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Originally Posted by SkStu

read this article today and thought of my post above. While i wont say "i'm right" as it is clearly a very nuanced topic, the article does support that possession without intent is meaningless in terms of team effectiveness and that good players make a big difference. Anyway, more so thought it might be a good read for those interested...

https://theathletic.com/2352067/2021...c-in-football/

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Why pay? Just stating the bleedin' obvious.

Pay?? That’s weird. I didn’t have to pay on desktop but just clicked thru on mobile and see it does require payment. Sorry about that.

It was a good read, it said a good bit more than that, like.

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Originally Posted by Eirambler

I think people are overestimating the standard of Croatia's domestic structures to be honest. Generally what their national team has achieved is done despite their domestic setup, not because of it.

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Ya this one's been pulled out a few times and then referenced about new Zealand in rugby. I mentioned a few years back when I was in Croatia a friend brought me a long to sibenik and a local youth team in makarska training. I'm no expert but the facilities didn't look much better than my local football club at home for the second team mentioned. And I was in split and saw another team training as we were driving around and again facilities and stuff like that were similar to what I'd have seen around LOI clubs.
The other argument thrown out was oh but they don't have Gaelic sports : rolleyes: they've got waterpolo, handball and basketball to compete with similar numbers of countries playing that at a high level in the world to rugby. Oh and they got more medals than us I'm pretty sure at the last Olympics. The only thing they don't produce is golfers and you can probably guess why that is.

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Originally Posted by SkStu

read this article today and thought of my post above. While i wont say "i'm right" as it is clearly a very nuanced topic, the article does support that possession without intent is meaningless in terms of team effectiveness and that good players make a big difference. Anyway, more so thought it might be a good read for those interested...

https://theathletic.com/2352067/2021...c-in-football/

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The possession without intent bit was that not what the other side in this discussion was saying?! I don't remember you saying that but I do remember me saying it :P

facilities are one thing but the structures are clearly in place domestically in croatia for them to be churning out players like this. i dont think its even up for debate. whatever they are doing they are doing it exceptionally well considering they also compete with a massive sport like basketball

One huge benefit they have of course is that they get huge transfer fees to reinvest into the clubs (and maybe siphon off a couple of mill illegally of course). Dinamo got €11m this season, €24m last season (per wiki). That's huge money.

But yeah, there's something in the water there alright

youd have to assume they dont have their own versions of ddsl csl etc interfering with the schoolboys game aswell. but look maybe those involved in schoolboy football in ireland will wake up eventually. our population is growing , theirs is declining. the only way should be up for ireland but god knows it wont happen.

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Originally Posted by Jd2793

our population is growing , theirs is declining. the only way should be up for ireland but god knows it wont happen.

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I'd be a little bit careful about simplifying like this. Croatia's expat population is growing (Lovren, Rakitic, Corluka, Kovacic, etc) and our population is growing because of people who don't necessarily consider themselves Irish (although I think the GAA will be the bigger loser there).

I think as the century goes on, and the population of Croatia and other Eastern European countries tends towards nil while the population of Ireland and other Western countries pushes below 50% original native (for want of a better term), you're likely to see increased kickback against that. May you live in interesting times, as they say...

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Originally Posted by mark12345

I would say the population comparison is significant. How can Croatia (and indeed Uruguay) with similar population do infinitely better than us. It's all down to coaching. And while ours may have improved a bit, we're still not remotely close to these standards

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"All" is too strong. Coaching and youth structures are the biggest part, but there are others: e.g. as Ireland grew more affluent, the attraction of a risky sporting career may have diminished; rugby has become the flagship successful international team sport, siphoning off atheletic talent; the GAA also competes for talent; both GAA and rugby compete for state sports funding (as do horse and greyhound racing with a disgraceful amount of success); "home-grown" quotas in UK squads and the rise of UK football as a fashionably place for a billionaire to own a club means our players are competing with global talent far more than a generation ago.

The way you fight all of this is to improve domestic youth structures and coaching, and to invest in the domestic league as a development league for young talent. That requires competent investment, and we have the FAI: a laughing stock among sporting organisations even domestically.

I'm not so sure. Look at Switzerland , conflict is dying out in these countries , and with that the sense of national identity is diluting. Mad to think ireland has 20% non-native population already. It's great if it wasn't so regionalised. But at the same time I don't want that sense of " irishness " lost.

Oh and the money thing in Croatia. No I'm not buying that either that's why hajduk fans were protesting in the stands at those euros way back. Dinamo are still corrupt sure the president had to go live in bih for a while due to all the swindling. That money is all soaked up in one club. It does very little for Croatian football. Have you been to hajduk stadium? Their trophy cabinet is the most impressive thing about it....

Just you bring it back to Croatia, teams like Zagreb have been exporting players successfully for decades, and ploughing that money back into their facilities. As well as that they've had success domestically and played regularly in European competition, all of which raised their profile and have playing for them an attractive proposition.
If you asked a Croatian football fan to name a League of Ireland team, how many do you think they'd manage?

Croatia produces fine athletic specimens as well ( that are also brilliant footballers which helps ) and when the exception turns out to be Luka Modric then you have some sort of DNA advantage.

I would say Croatians are very patriotic and probably don’t pay much attention when their club managers tell them Not to come back with injuries / hamstring strains / etc.

Football wise they are on a different planet to the Republic of Ireland.

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Originally Posted by SkStu

read this article today and thought of my post above. While i wont say "i'm right" as it is clearly a very nuanced topic, the article does support that possession without intent is meaningless in terms of team effectiveness and that good players make a big difference. Anyway, more so thought it might be a good read for those interested...

https://theathletic.com/2352067/2021...c-in-football/

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fair enough, but the observation that possession for possession’s sake is hardly revelatory.

No, not at all!! But as I said, it does go a bit deeper into the whole topic of possession and other statistical indicators around effectiveness.

It's a bit like using BMI for health. At best, it's an indicator of how well you're doing, but you can still get a good result despite having a bad value in either.

Ya you told youre a healthy weight only to have chronic heart disease

I've always been a bit sceptical of this "competing sports" argument. I've heard it said you need x hours a week of contact with a ball etc to develop to the standard required and our players aren't getting that. I've heard that early specialisation is key but equally I've heard that playing other sports is key. Which is it? My guess (and that's all it is) is that if you have the talent to be a top footballer you'll get there despite the competition from other codes - notwithstanding luck, having a pathway etc.

I've heard anecdotally that John Egan was a brilliant GAA footballer, Shane Long a great hurler, Tony Grealish a very good GAA footballer, Niall Quinn a real talent at hurling. Several rugby players like Rob Kearney had very good GAA backgrounds. But they all ended up doing what they were comparatively better at and at a very high level. I read at the time of his death that Grealish was immersed in GAA culture but what really stood out was his gift for footy. Does football really lose top class talent to GAA and rugby? Maybe we actually benefit from it?

I'd place more value on an argument that Croatia and Denmark benefit from having exposure to other sports like handball, or hockey in the Netherlands, sports that give you not just the diversified exposure you need to develop certain motor skills but also spatial awareness that is closer to the needs of football.

I'm not sure rugby draws its talent pool from potential top class footballers. I'm not making a socio economic cliche here but a disproportionate number of rugby players come from a small number of schools. And the type of athlete needed to excel at rugby isn't necessarily the same as that required by football. GAA football is probably closer but I remember hearing stories like Graham Geraty trialling at football and not being good enough.

I think the GAA's economic and political might crowds out investment in football though, and that is a big factor. I don't think the IRFU crowds out potential investment in football though.

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Originally Posted by Stuttgart88

I've always been a bit sceptical of this "competing sports" argument. I've heard it said you need x hours a week of contact with a ball etc to develop to the standard required and our players aren't getting that. I've heard that early specialisation is key but equally I've heard that playing other sports is key. Which is it? My guess (and that's all it is) is that if you have the talent to be a top footballer you'll get there despite the competition from other codes - notwithstanding luck, having a pathway etc.

I've heard anecdotally that John Egan was a brilliant GAA footballer, Shane Long a great hurler, Tony Grealish a very good GAA footballer, Niall Quinn a real talent at hurling. Several rugby players like Rob Kearney had very good GAA backgrounds. But they all ended up doing what they were comparatively better at and at a very high level. I read at the time of his death that Grealish was immersed in GAA culture but what really stood out was his gift for footy. Does football really lose top class talent to GAA and rugby? Maybe we actually benefit from it?

I'd place more value on an argument that Croatia and Denmark benefit from having exposure to other sports like handball, or hockey in the Netherlands, sports that give you not just the diversified exposure you need to develop certain motor skills but also spatial awareness that is closer to the needs of football.

I'm not sure rugby draws its talent pool from potential top class footballers. I'm not making a socio economic cliche here but a disproportionate number of rugby players come from a small number of schools. And the type of athlete needed to excel at rugby isn't necessarily the same as that required by football. GAA football is probably closer but I remember hearing stories like Graham Geraty trialling at football and not being good enough.

I think the GAA's economic and political might crowds out investment in football though, and that is a big factor. I don't think the IRFU crowds out potential investment in football though.

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I was a much better soccer player than a GAA player but I could do a certain job on a GAA pitch if you needed a player to give the full-back / centre half-back a physical battle ~ I will be honest if you had a good attacking player then I would not be playing but sometime needs must, and in these positions a physical battle can have an impact on a GAA pitch.

John Egans father was a brilliant Kerry footballer who won multiple All-Ireland in one of the best GAA teams of all time ~ ~ He was a very fast forward and I mean very fast.

Yeah I remember John Egan Senior very well!

But what was your main point? That you were maybe a more effective GAA player despite being more talented at football? Did playing both make you better at either?

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Originally Posted by Stuttgart88

I've always been a bit sceptical of this "competing sports" argument. I've heard it said you need x hours a week of contact with a ball etc to develop to the standard required and our players aren't getting that. I've heard that early specialisation is key but equally I've heard that playing other sports is key. Which is it? My guess (and that's all it is) is that if you have the talent to be a top footballer you'll get there despite the competition from other codes - notwithstanding luck, having a pathway etc.

I've heard anecdotally that John Egan was a brilliant GAA footballer, Shane Long a great hurler, Tony Grealish a very good GAA footballer, Niall Quinn a real talent at hurling. Several rugby players like Rob Kearney had very good GAA backgrounds. But they all ended up doing what they were comparatively better at and at a very high level. I read at the time of his death that Grealish was immersed in GAA culture but what really stood out was his gift for footy. Does football really lose top class talent to GAA and rugby? Maybe we actually benefit from it?

I'd place more value on an argument that Croatia and Denmark benefit from having exposure to other sports like handball, or hockey in the Netherlands, sports that give you not just the diversified exposure you need to develop certain motor skills but also spatial awareness that is closer to the needs of football.

I'm not sure rugby draws its talent pool from potential top class footballers. I'm not making a socio economic cliche here but a disproportionate number of rugby players come from a small number of schools. And the type of athlete needed to excel at rugby isn't necessarily the same as that required by football. GAA football is probably closer but I remember hearing stories like Graham Geraty trialling at football and not being good enough.

I think the GAA's economic and political might crowds out investment in football though, and that is a big factor. I don't think the IRFU crowds out potential investment in football though.

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Yeah I agree we don't lose irish internationals to gaa. Tohill and gerarthy had a go at pro football when at a high level but weren't good enough.

Dessie Hutchinson at Brighton was a very good player but a level below the likes of molumby and when it didn't work out went back very successfully to hurling.

Lads gave up gaa to play pro rugby sweetman the Cork hurler been an example of a super hurlin talent who took the pro contract with munster when it was on offer and has had a decent 10 year rugby career but hasn't reached the heights I think he would have in hurling

GAA loses players to afl rehularly simply as it offers a bit of travel and a chance to earn a bit of money and the vast majority have very limited success compared to how successful they would be at gaa

Bottom line is there are likely no kids who would have been international footballers if it wasn't for gaa

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Originally Posted by Stuttgart88

Yeah I remember John Egan Senior very well!

But what was your main point? That you were maybe a more effective GAA player despite being more talented at football? Did playing both make you better at either?

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No ~ I was a more talented soccer player ~ Had a bit of skill, even if I say so myself ~ I suppose being able to look after myself on a GAA pitch also helped me be able to look after myself on a Soccer pitch ~ The skills did not really translate from Soccer to GAA.

I spent a lot of time on my own becoming skilled with a soccer ball ~ ~ Had there been a lot of other boys about playing GAA I may well have become more skilled at GAA ~ ~ I think you need to actually play GAA to become skilled at GAA ~ ~ I think you can actually become skilled with a soccer ball on your own ~ ~ I even played a lot indoors un-supervised on the stairs / in rooms in just socks ~ ~ I became skill-full at not banging my toes off stuff while still controlling the ball ~ ~ I did once break a crystal jug belonging to my mother ~ like I said I was left “ un-supervised “ a lot. Obviously you then need to play soccer to translate that skill to the soccer field. I did some of this but not enough and certainly not enough 11 a side ~ ~ lots of 5 aside though ~ I was / am around 5 foot 9 inches ( and a bit ) ~ ya might get away with that in soccer ( in some positions ) but you would have to pretty darn good or in a specialist position to do well in Rugby or GAA at that height. You might get away with being a clever fast forward / fullback in soccer or extremely good in other positions in soccer at that height.

I would say ~ again my own opinion ~ my three weakness’s as a soccer player were ~ Very right footed / could have done with a bit more speed but who couldn’t / probably could have done with being a bit bigger as well ~ ~ I was pretty good at everything else if I say so myself and was obviously a great loss to Irish soccer ( wink wink )

I also did a lot of ball work outside of course ~ just pinging passes to a seat / pillar / what ever / off a wall ~ ~ another weakness, not a great long passer.

I did play as a forward in both sports which is mildly interesting.

[QUOTE=seanfhear;2132619]

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Originally Posted by liamoo11

Yeah I agree we don't lose irish internationals to gaa. Tohill and gerarthy had a go at pro football when at a high level but weren't good enough.

Dessie Hutchinson at Brighton was a very good player but a level below the likes of molumby and when it didn't work out went back very successfully to hurling.

Lads gave up gaa to play pro rugby sweetman the Cork hurler been an example of a super hurlin talent who took the pro contract with munster when it was on offer and has had a decent 10 year rugby career but hasn't reached the heights I think he would have in hurling

GAA loses players to afl rehularly simply as it offers a bit of travel and a chance to earn a bit of money and the vast majority have very limited success compared to how successful they would be at gaa

Bottom line is there are likely no kids who would have been international footballers if it wasn't for gaa

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I will give one example of a guy that would surely have been a good soccer player ~ ~ Mikey Sheehy of Kerry ~ ~ That man had ball skill to burn as a GAA player ~ ~ I find it impossible to believe that had he being playing soccer from a young boy that he would not have been able to transfer that ball skill to soccer ~ ~ Look the reality is to make it as a professional soccer player then you are going to have to have played an enormous amount of soccer when you are young. Isn’t there something about 10,000 hours of practice whilst also having the talent.

I reckon there is a lot of GAA players that could have made a darn good go of making it at soccer if they had played enough soccer when they were young ~ ~ And some of them actually making it as professionals. Kevin Moran as one example.

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Originally Posted by liamoo11

Yeah I agree we don't lose irish internationals to gaa. Tohill and gerarthy had a go at pro football when at a high level but weren't good enough.

Dessie Hutchinson at Brighton was a very good player but a level below the likes of molumby and when it didn't work out went back very successfully to hurling.

Lads gave up gaa to play pro rugby sweetman the Cork hurler been an example of a super hurlin talent who took the pro contract with munster when it was on offer and has had a decent 10 year rugby career but hasn't reached the heights I think he would have in hurling

GAA loses players to afl rehularly simply as it offers a bit of travel and a chance to earn a bit of money and the vast majority have very limited success compared to how successful they would be at gaa

Bottom line is there are likely no kids who would have been international footballers if it wasn't for gaa

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I have to say I couldn't agree with this less to be honest. I'm absolutely convinced that we lose international standard players to GAA, loads of them, we just don't know who they are (and they're probably not the big name gaelic footballers).

Take, just for example, the counties of Dublin and Mayo. Dublin has about 10 times the population of Mayo, but probably 100 times the number of senior international football players, if not more. There hasn't been an Irish senior international from Mayo in decades. Statistically, if all things were spread equally, there should have been quite a few internationals from Mayo in that time, but there haven't been any. If there have been, say, 200 international players from Dublin in the last 25 years there should have been probably 15 to 20 from Mayo.

Do people really think that's because people from Dublin are somehow naturally better at football than people from Mayo? Surely it's fairly obvious that it's just the case because most kids in Mayo grow up only playing Gaelic, so therefore never have a chance to be professional football players. Whereas football is played a lot more by young people in Dublin.

The make up of our senior team is very clearly biased towards areas where football is played more. Obviously. Therefore there will be literally hundreds of people around the country today working in other areas who would have been professional footballers if they had just happened to have been born somewhere where the game is played more.

Just to put my own example on this - I grew up in a part of Ireland where hardly anyone played football. To the point where it was basically frowned upon to do so. You played GAA and that was it. As an adult I moved somewhere else (Glasgow) where football was the main sport and started playing regularly for the first time. Turns out, after playing catch up for a couple of years, I was actually a fairly handy football player despite being a very average gaelic player, I just never knew it before because I hadn't played other than a bit in the school yard.

I'm not saying I could have personally been a pro had I been born somewhere else or anything like that, but I knew loads of lads growing up who were generally better than me at sport, but only ever played GAA to a serious level. Without question potential professional footballers are lost in a situation like that. For that reason the failure of football to really break into GAA dominated parts of the country really does limit our playing pool.

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Originally Posted by Eirambler

I have to say I couldn't agree with this less to be honest. I'm absolutely convinced that we lose international standard players to GAA, loads of them, we just don't know who they are (and they're probably not the big name gaelic footballers).

Take, just for example, the counties of Dublin and Mayo. Dublin has about 10 times the population of Mayo, but probably 100 times the number of senior international football players, if not more. There hasn't been an Irish senior international from Mayo in decades. Statistically, if all things were spread equally, there should have been quite a few internationals from Mayo in that time, but there haven't been any. If there have been, say, 200 international players from Dublin in the last 25 years there should have been probably 15 to 20 from Mayo.

Do people really think that's because people from Dublin are somehow naturally better at football than people from Mayo? Surely it's fairly obvious that it's just the case because most kids in Mayo grow up only playing Gaelic, so therefore never have a chance to be professional football players. Whereas football is played a lot more by young people in Dublin.

The make up of our senior team is very clearly biased towards areas where football is played more. Obviously. Therefore there will be literally hundreds of people around the country today working in other areas who would have been professional footballers if they had just happened to have been born somewhere where the game is played more.

Just to put my own example on this - I grew up in a part of Ireland where hardly anyone played football. To the point where it was basically frowned upon to do so. You played GAA and that was it. As an adult I moved somewhere else (Glasgow) where football was the main sport and started playing regularly for the first time. Turns out, after playing catch up for a couple of years, I was actually a fairly handy football player despite being a very average gaelic player, I just never knew it before because I hadn't played other than a bit in the school yard.

I'm not saying I could have personally been a pro had I been born somewhere else or anything like that, but I knew loads of lads growing up who were generally better than me at sport, but only ever played GAA to a serious level. Without question potential professional footballers are lost in a situation like that. For that reason the failure of football to really break into GAA dominated parts of the country really does limit our playing pool.

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Agree with this.
If there was no GAA the standard of domestic soccer would be far higher and more competitive

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Originally Posted by Fixer82

Agree with this.
If there was no GAA the standard of domestic soccer would be far higher and more competitive

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Agreed Ireland is a sports mad country ~ ~ If so much more of that sports mad, was playing a lot more soccer, we would have many more good soccer players.

If you have a sports mad country and the population concentrates on a sport such as soccer then that country will produce many good players ~ E.G. ~ Croatia and Uruguay.

We play too many sports to be as good as we should / could be, in soccer. When you think about it we would be even worse had we not been supplemented by all the UK born players down through the years ! !

I definitely agree with the general sentiment that the high rates of participation in GAA has taken some absolutely fantastic athletes away from soccer and other codes, I don't think it is the biggest problem we are facing or "the reason" we lag other nations in terms of producing a team that can compete. From what i can recall, participation rates in soccer remain high across our youths and on a numbers basis is higher than GAA (with a bunch of younger folks playing both up to U12 or U14 which is when there seems to be a decision made to drop something). Another factor is the decline in youth numbers in sports in general in Ireland which, although seems to be global, impacts smaller nations like us that bit more acutely.

There is so much that is within our direct control, though, when it comes to "the problem". Primarily coaching (which is improving anecdotally) and appropriate pathways. The FAI, as i think we can all agree, has been asleep at the wheel for 40 years. A policy of reliance on the FA, SFA and the IFA to be the main providers of our international players (granted the SFA and IFA are a far smaller part of that "strategy") whether through heritage or through development - - at the expense of self-determination is borderline unforgivable. Our greatest asset in that regard (our domestic league) remains a second thought and is still not at the top table in a meaningful way. Or at least the clubs have been left to figure it out themselves for the most part. Maybe it will all come together in the next ten years but i have been saying the same thing for the last 20 years at least and it is difficult to see any real progress. There has been a lot of talk about removing the power and politics from the youth system and transferring that to the LOI to create more meaningful pathways but its all too incremental from my perspective. We still seem to rely far too heavily on (increasingly less and less high profile) English clubs to develop our top young talent. I think it would serve us far better to think of the majority of our young talent going from youth to academy to professional (LOI) domestically as the "best way" and to make the necessary structural changes and financial investments to make that work. As i said, it is kind of happening but it is far too piecemeal. Just my thoughts...

Agree with the above Stu, but when you think of the level of investment that would be needed to have our domestic clubs' training facilities, coaches, etc on a par with say the Championship or even League 1, we are miles and miles away.

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Originally Posted by Eirambler

I have to say I couldn't agree with this less to be honest. I'm absolutely convinced that we lose international standard players to GAA, loads of them, we just don't know who they are (and they're probably not the big name gaelic footballers).

Take, just for example, the counties of Dublin and Mayo. Dublin has about 10 times the population of Mayo, but probably 100 times the number of senior international football players, if not more. There hasn't been an Irish senior international from Mayo in decades. Statistically, if all things were spread equally, there should have been quite a few internationals from Mayo in that time, but there haven't been any. If there have been, say, 200 international players from Dublin in the last 25 years there should have been probably 15 to 20 from Mayo.

Do people really think that's because people from Dublin are somehow naturally better at football than people from Mayo? Surely it's fairly obvious that it's just the case because most kids in Mayo grow up only playing Gaelic, so therefore never have a chance to be professional football players. Whereas football is played a lot more by young people in Dublin.

The make up of our senior team is very clearly biased towards areas where football is played more. Obviously. Therefore there will be literally hundreds of people around the country today working in other areas who would have been professional footballers if they had just happened to have been born somewhere where the game is played more.

Just to put my own example on this - I grew up in a part of Ireland where hardly anyone played football. To the point where it was basically frowned upon to do so. You played GAA and that was it. As an adult I moved somewhere else (Glasgow) where football was the main sport and started playing regularly for the first time. Turns out, after playing catch up for a couple of years, I was actually a fairly handy football player despite being a very average gaelic player, I just never knew it before because I hadn't played other than a bit in the school yard.

I'm not saying I could have personally been a pro had I been born somewhere else or anything like that, but I knew loads of lads growing up who were generally better than me at sport, but only ever played GAA to a serious level. Without question potential professional footballers are lost in a situation like that. For that reason the failure of football to really break into GAA dominated parts of the country really does limit our playing pool.

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Agree with this. Just a small example, Finn Harps had five players at international level a couple of years ago throughout various underage grades. Once the GAA came calling, they were effectively all gone. Have seen it countless times over the years. Several members of the Donegal gaelic football squad were all promising footballers.

Have seen many others over the years turning down fairly big trials at football clubs in favour of whatever weird parochial pride they have in GAA.

We absolutely lose quite a number of top footballers to the GAA every year.

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Originally Posted by osarusan

Agree with the above Stu, but when you think of the level of investment that would be needed to have our domestic clubs' training facilities, coaches, etc on a par with say the Championship or even League 1, we are miles and miles away.

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We are - miles and miles away - from a point where it makes a real difference. Which makes it even more galling that the FAI didn't see another way until it was basically way too late to make our successes in the 90's and early 00's more sustainable over a longer horizon. All those reports and recommendations over the years that just sat on a shelf gathering dust. Its a minimum 20 year plan and maybe we are in the midst of the transition required but I am not convinced.

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Originally Posted by John83

"All" is too strong. Coaching and youth structures are the biggest part, but there are others: e.g. as Ireland grew more affluent, the attraction of a risky sporting career may have diminished; rugby has become the flagship successful international team sport, siphoning off atheletic talent; the GAA also competes for talent; both GAA and rugby compete for state sports funding (as do horse and greyhound racing with a disgraceful amount of success); "home-grown" quotas in UK squads and the rise of UK football as a fashionably place for a billionaire to own a club means our players are competing with global talent far more than a generation ago.

The way you fight all of this is to improve domestic youth structures and coaching, and to invest in the domestic league as a development league for young talent. That requires competent investment, and we have the FAI: a laughing stock among sporting organisations even domestically.

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Every single syllable of what you say is true, John. But I remember none other than Ray Houghton saying exactly what you just said about our domestic youth system way back in the mid 90's. It's been 30 years and there are little or no results.
If we have progressed as a footballing nation then others have progressed at a higher rate.

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Originally Posted by paul_oshea

But at the same time I don't want that sense of " irishness " lost..

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Fair play to you Paul. Refreshing to hear.

Great article on Croatia's goalkeeper in general but this extract stood out in context of the above discussion, playing other games and having other careeer options. I'd have thought intuitively too that Ireland's relative affluence might affect kids' hunger to seek a career in sport but this guy had a very traditional "middle class" pathway marked out for him and still blossomed relatively late as a pro footballer.

Anyway, this is just a sample of one.

"The softly-spoken Livakovic also excelled at volleyball and basketball in his youth and briefly studied diplomacy and international relations at Zagreb university before joining Dinamo in 2015. “I’m putting it aside while I’m playing football, but I want to do it one day,” he said in an interview in 2019. “And my family is perhaps not sorry these days that I chose the ball instead of the book ...”"

If anyone has a subscription to independent.ie, this looks interesting
https://www.independent.ie/sport/soc...-42215101.html

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Originally Posted by Stuttgart88

Great article on Croatia's goalkeeper in general but this extract stood out in context of the above discussion, playing other games and having other careeer options. I'd have thought intuitively too that Ireland's relative affluence might affect kids' hunger to seek a career in sport but this guy had a very traditional "middle class" pathway marked out for him and still blossomed relatively late as a pro footballer.

Anyway, this is just a sample of one.

"The softly-spoken Livakovic also excelled at volleyball and basketball in his youth and briefly studied diplomacy and international relations at Zagreb university before joining Dinamo in 2015. “I’m putting it aside while I’m playing football, but I want to do it one day,” he said in an interview in 2019. “And my family is perhaps not sorry these days that I chose the ball instead of the book ...”"

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The Irish rugby team being consistently ranked top 3 in the world would prove this theory wrong

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Originally Posted by Fixer82

The Irish rugby team being consistently ranked top 3 in the world would prove this theory wrong

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Not comparable imho. Most of our rugby players come from a relatively small number of schools - generally very good schools - and make very little educational sacrifice to achieve their sporting goals. You don't even need to have played rugby from a young age to excel at it later. The global rugby and football landscapes are poles apart.

It was a point raised by John on the last page. It's a hard one to test as a theory but I certainly wouldn't cite rugby to disprove it.

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Originally Posted by pineapple stu

This is typical mypost.

"Give him time to do the job" - but he's had 30 games. "We won 50% of the last 6 games" - as the saying goes, there's lies, gross lies, and mypost's statistics. Two of those wins were dreadful performances against Malta and Armenia.

Unfortunately, after a decent enough last quarter of 2021, things seem to be going backwards now. "We won in Malta" - because they gifted us a goal we never looked like scoring. We scraped past Lithuania in the 97th minute. Enough of those performances, and one will bite you - stand up, Yerevan. And we got out of jail in the home game too.

One of the main criticisms of Mick was that we were really starting to struggle against the lower seeds - Georgia and Gibraltar in his case. We dropped two points in Tbilisi which was seen as a really bad performance. Now we take these sort of results as de rigeur. But if you aim to play passing, possession football like Kenny does (and that's a good thing) you should start to see an uptick in results against the minnows. They can't just sit and defend long balls; they have to be smarter - and they're not, by definition. So when Malta - whose best player is at Oxford - comfortably match us (worst player - Oxford) for 90 minutes, one howler aside, then there's problems. And when that happens with regularity, it's alarming.

Yes, the squad is the worst it's been in living memory - and it's unbalanced too; lots of defenders and no attackers - so that's a mitigant in his favour. But let's have less of the stats please.

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No sorry.

From your post, it sounds as if you're overjoyed that because of the tactics we use, you're delighted that we lost in Armenia, but disgusted that we got out of jail apparantly, because we beat them at home.

If we're in the results business, (as we keep being told Kenny is in) then it doesn't matter how we beat Malta or Armenia or even Lithuania. The fact is we beat them, that's the truth, not lies, or even gross lies. If you don't like that stat, that's tough.

Nobody cares about performances in friendlies. Well, apart from Ireland fans it seems, while Kenny is in charge only. Despite the experiments in players and formations and tactics, styles of play and multiple substitutions that is routine in international friendlies, we care about how likely we were to score, and whether the performance is considered dreadful or not. Nobody else does.

When I say give him the time to do the job, that's what I mean, not hound him out the door after every single game, win draw or neither. We're not going backwards. We're scoring goals and we're winning games nowadays. 3 against Scotland, 3 against Armenia, 3 in Azerbaijan, 3 in Luxembourg. This is unheard of luxury by comparison to what's gone before, when we were scoring less than 10 goals per qualifying campaign, while failing to qualify in the process. And we're doing it while learning to play a better brand of football and bringing through new players. No we're not qualifying for tournaments, but it's something we've had to get used to for the past 20 years.

Surely kids should be allowed to play as many sports as they can until they are about 14. In that time they will find a sport that suits them and hopefully they will play that into their adult career and keep participating for longer than they might if they had to persist with a sport they did not really like.
The GAA are in every part of the country and they ensure that as many as possible play their games. Rugby to a lesser extent but it has made a real effort to spread the game and is now in locations it would not have been years ago.
Both of these organisations have been very well run for many years and it would be hard to imagine a CEO of either being give the power to effectively end up as the only voice that matters.
Soccer needs to look at these learn from them and relaunch itself. Its not that soccer does not have a lot of people participating bu there appears to be a complete disconnect from Abbotstown and the rest of the game in this country.
The FAI need to reset the page, reorganise, get better at relating to the grassroots and rebuild.
The GAA and Rugby don't stand in the way of players playing soccer. The fact that they are better run means that they are more attractive to young people. This is something soccer can address.

I think of my own childhood in Roscommon. I played GAA from U-10 to U-21 badly but every year we had a team, training and fixtures known well in advance as well as schools championship games.

Football was U-12 for community games where we trained on the GAA pitch using underage GAA posts and seemed surprised when we appeared on a football pitch how bigger the goals and pitch was so that was a total of 2 games in 2 years. In school we played soccer at P&E and indoor football in the winter. I played 5/6 a side indoors from 12-18 every Sunday night with the lads and kickabouts with others the odd time. There was no organised football team in our area till we played at Under 18 in Roscommon & District League and made the Div 2 final and it was great to play with guys from school from other GAA clubs who we normally fought on the field with even if good friends off it. It was more social than anything serious.

I played one game of rugby under 11 as I got dragged along by a neighbour to make up numbers.

My rural childhood cant be much different to a lot of kids. I am not sure how many decent footballers never got the opportunity to play the game or even get coached which is probably more important. GAA had great coaching and county stars would show up to train us or county development officers. The awe we as kids had when Ms Murray brought her father the legend Jimmy Murray to our school, the only Roscommon man to lift the Sam Maguire. The only soccer influence came from a teacher brought up in England and he didn't push it very hard to have a school football team.