Originally Posted by
Strongbow10
Reading so many posts on here, and football in Ireland seems to begin and end with the senior national team. LOI fans with an axe to grind against non LOI fans who they deem too critical, and Liverpool/Man United fans baying for blood because there is no **** up on the continent at a major tournament on the horizon.
Personally, I fall between 2 stools, LOI match goer and follow a team across the water closely also. Having to preface my post with this information is pretty stupid but maybe it gives some context anyway.
My 2 cents are as follows:
We need to forget about qualifying for any major tournament for probably the next 8-12 years. Fans, the FAI etc.. may cry treason, but we need to stop tying all of our eggs up in one basket with the national team. I don't think Stephen Kenny is the standard of manager we should be looking to if we were hoping to be successful in the short or medium term, but thats neither here nor there. People's solution seems to be throwing a million euro at another semi big name, who will hopefully cobble together a squad who will provide a spirited effort and more than likely come up short.
If we are to move forward we simply need to look at the bigger picture for Irish football. Every ounce of investment/resources we have need to be funnelled into development at grass roots in this country. Very simplistic to say our league needs looking at, but if we are to have a model that is sustainable and under our own control then we need some creative solutions about how the game can be developed here properly. We simply need a functioning league where our best young talent play senior league football week in week out. We need to seek the investment to keep them in Ireland (rather than being shipped to England where we roll the dice and hope they develop them for us), but we also need to obviously make it a viable option financially. Private sector investment is the only way to go. Allow our league to become somewhat sustainable in time by attracting proper transfer fees for our best players because there is genuine perception that we develop some quality.
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