On that topic, I thought this was an interesting article by Miguel Delaney - https://migueldelaney.com/2014/10/08...mpression=true
It's 6 years old now, and I'd say not a lot has changed in that time. The national underage leagues go to u13 now, but I think some players prefer the old clubs still.
But the comment there about how Irish players don't fare well in England because of their poor coaching probably helps explain why so few players have come through in recent years. It's a huge issue
we must be doing something right given the relative success of our underage teams the last few years. mostly home grown players too. covid and kenny going to the seniors cost our u21s qualification
We have to face reality whilst we say football is the most played game in Ireland are many of the more talented youngsters particularly outside of Dublin still picking GAA first and Rugby is also a lot more popular regionally than it used be .
In most other countries football is by a country mile the chosen sport of the most talented youngsters . Where would we be If we didn’t have the sons and grandsons of the Irish that emigrated to England who wouldn’t have GAA or much rugby as a distraction .
Too much competition in this country for talented youngsters who are good at 3 or 4 sports .
It will come right eventually because at least most of the better underage players are going to LOI underage set ups earlier.. but it'll take a decade to come to fruitionQuote:
Originally Posted by jbyrne
A bigger change may come from Brexit, with players not moving now until after 18, and the new coronavirus limits on spending at League 1 and 2 clubs in England
I say we end this process unless he resigns, he must play only the kids, to get capped gain experience, yesterday was unacceptable result and performance
so ditch coleman, egan, randolph and to a lesser extent browne? could also make a case for doherty and brady if he can get his full fitness back. we dont have anywhere near a team of promising "kids" yetQuote:
Originally Posted by Bielsa´s irish
Not sure that's true. Kenny's 21s post in Iceland which was a poor result.Quote:
Originally Posted by jbyrne
the thing is the motivation , and the pandemia, the senior players may retire sooner, It is a plausibleb scenario, if hes gonna built for the future, lets keep egan coleman randolph and mccarthy and the rest under 26 years oldQuote:
Originally Posted by jbyrne
not just the loss of kenny as manager. lost players to the seniors for vital qualifiers due to covid. in any event it was our bests 21s campaign in ages. u19s finals appearance in 2019 tooQuote:
Originally Posted by liamoo11
Well said! (Mark1234)
I've been thinking about the number of LOI 'stars' who went to Britain as adults and didn't really succeed: Forrester, Towell, Boyle, McMillan, Burke, etc. It seems now that even those who get to play regularly in the EFL Championship are lacking in some of the technical skills. So bringing in coaches at 'grass roots' level, from countries where close control, keeping the ball down when shooting, and dribbling (remember that?) are valued, would be a major step in the right direction.
thanks for the clarification on this. Of Kenny's 44 substitutions, the average time has been on 70 minutes, although the three injury enforced substitutions (Long V Wales on 24m, Egan V England on 13m, and Doherty against Luxembourg at half time) skew this a little. The only ones that have made any sort of impact on the game were Robbie Brady against Bulgaria, and Collins and Long against Serbia.Quote:
Originally Posted by ifk101
Whatever Kenny's Plan A has been, it hasn't been working, and of all the changes he's made, only three have made any kind of difference to the game.
My vision is of a poor village in some South American country with 7 and 8-year-olds playing football. It was from those type of beginnings that every megastar from Pele to Alexi Sanchez was produced. And it took, crucially, the involvement of some parent/coach who taught these kids the skills of the trade. There was no money involved and little or no facilities. I think you get the picture. Why can't we reproduce that in Ireland? We can't produce it because there is no one in Ireland, that I know of at least, with those type of skills to teach to kids that age. So we need to import them and pay them rather than wasting money FAI style.Quote:
Originally Posted by Insidetherock
Maybe we need street football again. Is that possible ?
Was the performance really any worse than, say, Gibraltar at home under Mick? All much of a muchness really. And Mick had a better starting XI to pick from. The result shouldn't really surprise any of us. Coleman (and Bazunu) was absolutely right saying the players lacked the courage to want the ball. There were times early in the Serbia game where the players seemed to trust each other, take some risks and pass to each other in tight positions in an attempt to break the press. I thought the signs were bad in the Lux game after only 5 minutes. Everything looked slow and laboured and nobody seemed to want to take charge. It's something we've discussed for years here, players like Hendrick shouting for the ball knowing at the same time he had put himself into a position where no pass was available.
Clearly Kenny has to take the flak here too. You have to order the players to take risks (even if playing one/two touch football shouldn't be considered risky) and if they don't respond you yell at them from the sidelines to start doing it. Kenny is very passive in-game and his substitutions were weird. We finished the game with Coleman and Stevens in a back 3, where each should have been given license to attack - it's what they do best. Why have 3 at the back when at the same time you are neutralising the very thing it's supposed to allow?
And individual performances were awful. I like Stevens a lot but at times in the first half you'd swear the touchline was something he was unfamiliar with. He had a similar awful start vs Switzerland but grew into the game. Browne, a good player, was all over the place. Poor control, poor passing.
If I was manager now I'd tell each and every one to show the Giles "moral courage'. Tell them you'd rather they made mistakes trying to do the right thing rather than play mistake-free football that yields a slow predictable build up with no pressure. Break the game into ten minute blocks and see if they can complete each ten minutes the right way. Like said above, "street football". We used to play on the road and sometimes it wasn't about scoring. It was about showing off, making your pals look stupid chasing the ball, and humiliating them by walking the ball into the goal instead of a pot shot from 10 yards (a long distance in street football!).
Wow; Spain were lower-ranked than us in 1993
The Eloratings site gives us as the side who've declined most in the world in the past 12 months - down 116 points.
Libya are are next worst in that period, down 109, followed by the North down 103 and Slovakia down 100.
That was my first reaction too! I had to double check it on fifa's site, but it's true: https://www.fifa.com/fifa-world-rank.../men/rank/id3/Quote:
Originally Posted by pineapple stu
(select 23 September 1993 in the drop down box)
Well soon enough we won't have to worry about losing to lower ranked teams.
Damn near everyone was lower rated than us back then. I think it was 1992 when we peaked at #4 on earth. Big Jack had a good team available to him, but he worked wonders too.Quote:
Originally Posted by pineapple stu
Spain used to have a weird thing going on between the Real Players and the Barcelona Players and the National Team and was the National Team the b all and end all to these players in any case. Liverpool’s players in the 70’s and 80’s was much more to the Club than England. Something Alex Ferguson learned from and used at Man Utd. Spain were a really under performing international team until the relatively recent teams that we all know. It wasn’t “ only / if “ the Players were good enough it was whether the Players really wanted to do it for Spain and especially considering where ( which clubs ) a lot of the players were coming from.Quote:
Originally Posted by tetsujin1979
Did England actually take international football all that seriously until near the 1960’s ?
Spain probably did not until much later.
There’s always an Up-Side ! !Quote:
Originally Posted by brine3
I think your argument is intuitively true. I'm not saying I disagree but I do often wonder how many genuinely class players we lose out to other sports though. My sense is that those with a real gift for football (rather than those who are better than most but never likely to excel at elite level) do tend to specialise at football. I read a story about Tony Grealish once, how he'd watch his dad play GAA while dribbling football behind the goal. Tony played GAA too and was good at it but excelled at the football. Do we really lose many exceptional footballers to other sports? Does it matter in the overall scheme of things if kids play other sports and move away from football? I don't know but my instinctive answer is to think we don't lose many potential elites to other games.Quote:
Originally Posted by Abbeyman
Did anyone see the Twitter pic posted last week of a young Gavin Bazunu shaking hands with a kid called Jack Lundy, then of Leicester Celtic? Each was about 9 or 10 at the time. David McWilliams of the Irish Times asked who the other kid (Lundy was). His dad replied saying it was his lad, and had come from a 100% football family but went to school at St. Mary's Rathmines where he because the rugby team out-half and someone added that he also went on to captain Dublin minors. But football broke the dad's heart. The GAA club was a constant, a well funded well supported club that was there down the years and will be there for years to come. The school allowed for continuous development, 6 years of being in the same team and regular competition against other schools. The football: teams broke up, players got poached, 4 league seasons weren't finished and it was a shambles and he gave up.
I suppose it's a numbers thing. Football clearly loses players to other games as it clearly doesn't help itself and the more players you lose the % chance of missing a very good player increases. But playing other games at a young age is generally seen as a good thing too (Ruud Dokter disagrees though). And while Rob Kearney could have been a super GAA player for example, could he have been an international standard footballer? Could Sexton, Carbery or O'Gara have been turned into footballers of the standard needed if they'd specialised at football early? I'd say it's more likely Andy Reid could have been another Tony Ward rather than Ronan O'Gara being another Andy Reid. Ward was a very good footballer btw. My own experience from playing in a big rugby school is that the better footballers on the first XV rugby team were genuinely really good rugby players (Leinster schools quality) but none could hold a candle to a kid called James Crowley at football. James was on the books at Bohs but never got near the first team. Shels legend Eric Barber's son Malcolm was in my year. He was just miles better than the best all-rounders in the school at football. I have no idea what level he went on to play at but probably no higher than LSL.
I'm not surprised by that stat tbh. Over the years we've had our ups and downs, but we generally don't lose at home. Lansdoowne Rd is a hard old nut to crack for visiting teams.
I do think the lack of fans is contributing to our fall from grace. The atmosphere can be lacking when it comes to teams where there's a gulf in class, but when opposition of a similar level to ourselves come to town it's usually very good.
Quote:
Originally Posted by paul_oshea
Paul, you have until 8:30 this evening to provide the requested points.Quote:
Originally Posted by tetsujin1979
part of the problem is a pitches thing. most football clubs play on local authority pitches which inevitably end up closed for weeks on end from november to february due to weather. I experienced this myself constantly when playing. rugby at youth level is largely schools based with no such pitch problem. Id say an awful lot of GAA clubs own their own pitches too. Local authorities need to start building asto pitches so that kids (playing all codes) can continue to play uninterrupted through the whole seasonQuote:
Originally Posted by Stuttgart88
Facilities in Ireland are a joke. Can I ask any of you living in Ireland how far is it to your nearest proper running track?
How much does an astro pitch even cost? And an urban white water rafting park was seriously considered for EUR 25 million.
approx €1.5m to construct a GAA astro so I suppose maybe €1.2m or so.Quote:
Originally Posted by Stuttgart88
there are a few proper running tracks in the process of being built in Dublin (blanchardstown (i think), UCD and Dundrum that I am aware of) but we are a long way behind a lot of countries.
for some bizzare reason every new school in ireland seems to get massive basketball facilities...... probably because the hard surfaces double up as playgrounds that facilitate students coming back into class not covered in mud!
if they spent 5% of the annual health budget on extra sports facility funding every year i bet they would start saving 10% of the health budget in say 10 years time
If you have the land a top notch Astro (like the oriel or Roadstone) is around 400k for a full size pitch.
So Dublin CC could have done approximately 60 astros on Council land for the same price as the white water white elephant.....
Public record the Dublin County Manager is a member of Kayaking IReland.....so not that surprising..
https://www.independent.ie/irish-new...-38763521.html
Yet another example of just how badly Irish football does politics.
and jb, not only would health benefits accrue you'd also probably have crime reduction benefits too.
that €400,000 is just the carpet. it wont cover the cost of sub-base, fencing, floodlights, sub-pitch drainage etcQuote:
Originally Posted by sbgawa
I agree , just look at the absolute state of our national athletics stadium.Quote:
Originally Posted by Stuttgart88
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morton_Stadium
Lets see how it develops
anecdotal evidence - but in my primary school, there were two truly exceptional footballers in my class (of i'd guess about 14 boys). the second best has had a career of 400+ professional appearances so far between ireland and the uk. the best lad at age 12 (like the kid above, was also at leicester celtic at that age), he went to a rugby secondary school and he bulked up there, gained a lot of weight to be the best rugby player he could be. he continued playing football through his teens but focussed more on rugby. he left school still being a very good footballer, but nowhere near what he could have been had he gone down a different path.Quote:
Originally Posted by Stuttgart88
i remember when i was about 20, playing with a lad who had gone to the rugby school with Player A and had been the third keeper for the LOI side that player B was playing for the previous season. His take on it was that while Player A had the better football brain, player B was significantly the better athlete. While Player B was able to play several different sports at a high level with ease through his teens, Player A really needed to focus on playing football, stay light and trim and train regularly.
i think you can probably make assessments on a macro level, but there really is a whole spectrum of routes that work or don't work depending on the player.
FWIW Johnny Sexton was in the same primary school, but was about 5 years ahead, so can't remember at all if he was any good at football (he also went to Mary's).
interestingly, i also played with a lad who was in Andy Reid's year in Synge Street. He said Andy didn't make the school team for his year in football until 2nd or 3rd year. Bit weird considering his father's history in the game but probably re-enforces the idea of bad coaches not recognising good players...
That's mad about Andy Reid. Funnily enough Andrey Arshavin's kid was in my son's class in primary school and was rubbish apparently!
Small small world it is. I played with Malcolm Barber for 10 or 12 years in Boston, for a team called Bohemians. Superb player - a real Roy Keane of amateur football in Massachusetts. Quite a successful team were the Boston Bohs - all Irish, made up of players from amateur leagues at home - won Massachusetts state title 5 times. Got to be honest - having played reserve football in LOI at home, I learned more in six months playing in Boston than a lifetime of playing at home. When you come up against Italian, Portuguese, Brazilians etc, you learn a lot from them. And about Tony Ward - I saw him play for an Ireland select team against Southampton at Tolka Park. What a football player. He was excellent that night and was a real handful for the Saints. Kevin Keegan proclaimed after the game that Tony could have been a professional soccer player - and from what I saw he was right.Quote:
Originally Posted by Stuttgart88
Another thing that nobody of these streetwise irish football fans mentioned or talked I think is that we dont "win" yellow cards, I dont want to win the fair play award, I just wanna qualify to the WC.Quote:
Originally Posted by backstothewall
We should be smart enough and get some nasty business on the football pitch, I always remembered the Roy of Ireland vs Overmars, set the tone of the game.
Only Molumby showed that bite, we need more bite. Football and agressiveness, that Rodrigues the other day, imagine him playing against us or Uruguay or even brazil, we have class but we are better at closing down opposition and we are ready for a challenge and some streetwise methods and picardy.
Get some yellows. Dont be naive mr.Kennyn
I'd agree with this actually. We are too nice.Quote:
Originally Posted by Bielsa´s irish
Wow, I always wondered what had happened to Malcolm! I presume you've lost touch? If not I'll PM you so I can send my regards via you.Quote:
Originally Posted by mark12345
Had to come back to this before today's game.
Passinginterest summed up everything I could and would say so much better in the Qatar thread. Plenty of soul-searching the last few days. To sack Kenny now, would be a waste of time, waste of a year, and counter-productive.
Something I didn't realise until last night. We had three shots on target in the game against Luxembourg, but I didn't realise two of them came in the first half.
https://twitter.com/irish_abroad/sta...08698397286400
https://twitter.com/irish_abroad/sta...25372890578951
In 45 minutes of football, we had one shot on target against Luxembourg.