Last edited by Stuttgart88; 27/06/2011 at 8:58 PM.
Interesting aside about Irish teams possibly joining the Scottish (-dominated?) League.
The most likely might be Linfield and Glentoran- say if the IPL decided it couldn't sustain semi-pro football.
That's hardly rocket science....
Lads, I know my views on here did not go down too well with many of you, but after reading this article, I think ideas to stop this exodus of young Irish footballers is necessary. We need to somehow keep these guys at home until they are old enough to make their own decisions. Any ideas would certainly be welcome.
http://www.independent.ie/national-n...s-2893971.html
Sadlier discussing this on Newstalk now
DID YOU NOTICE A SIGN OUTSIDE MY HOUSE...?
I'm delighted that this is now a topic of national conversation. It was never gonna happen within the confines of foot.ie
DID YOU NOTICE A SIGN OUTSIDE MY HOUSE...?
Surely just having an all Ireland team will solve everything?
Taught, Bonnie, taught. You need to go back to academy.
I haven't seen it yet.
Gah...
DID YOU NOTICE A SIGN OUTSIDE MY HOUSE...?
Interesting comment from Trap that is somewhat relevant to this discussion:
http://www.independent.ie/sport/socc...s-3140403.html"Against Spain, you saw an idea of how we can try to look to the future." Trapattoni said. "For McClean, it wasn't the best time to put him on, but coming on like this will help him understand what international football is all about. Some of the players who are talked about in Ireland need to come in and play these games and get used to it. But it is not easy, because teams play different systems in international football, unlike in England where everybody plays the same way."
Is it not true, though? Roy Hodgson certainly isn't doing anything to dispute it.
It is very true. But we are stuck at this crossroads. We want to remove ourselves from the shackles of Perfidious Albion but if the majority of our players play there what can we do?
DID YOU NOTICE A SIGN OUTSIDE MY HOUSE...?
I think the national academy idea, if handled correctly, could be an excellent idea, though I have little faith in the FAI of doing a professional job of anything.
The English academy system we are reliant one is failing us pure and simple ; whether it works for England or not, it certainly doesn't work for us. If you doubt this just try and put together a team under the age of 30 of players from the Republic (not talking about plastics and our recent recruits from the North here as they are not relevant to the issue) who have followed the traditional route through english youth teams in to senior football. The resulting team probably wouldn't make the top 100 FIFA rankings.
The few younger players breaking through recently actually largely came through the much maligned League of Ireland (Long, Mcclean Coleman etc) rather than the english system, and these are the ones that werent rated highly enough at 16 to get picked up by english academies. For all its justifiable vilification the LOI is actually doing to some degree its job as in any smaller football country of nurturing local talent before they move on to bigger leagues when they are ready. The difference between our league and say Switzerland/Denmark and others is that the players leave earlier still as the LOI has little to offer them a professionals and the most talented youth players get excluded as for the most part they have already been chewed up and spit back out by english clubs before they were ready to make the move overseas.
What might work is having an Ireland academy team or even better a couple based here but competing in the english academy system if they will permit us. This would take some investment to make it financially viable and worthwhile to the young players themselves. Then they could have a senior version competing in the LOI for when they get beyond the age of 18 rather than going to rot in the english reserve team system which happens to so many of our young players. The better ones will get the chance to move on to english or perhaps continental teams inevitably but in the meantime they will get the chance to play properly competitive senior football to help their development and Irish supporters will have the opportunity to see our brightest young players playing in our league before they move on, like most countries do, so everyone gains.
Otherwise we can wait a century and wait to see if the LOI evolves enough to start doing this job anyway but who has the patience for that?
There should be compulsory Spanish lessons for all Irish youth players so a) they can score Spanish girls and b) go to Spain at different times during their development and learn what they can from some of the best youth systems. Catalonia is very Irish-friendly too.
IMO, it's the language gap more than anything that's preventing players looking beyond Engerland for their football education.
So they should learn Catalan then?
DID YOU NOTICE A SIGN OUTSIDE MY HOUSE...?
Originally Posted by mark12345
"Been away for a few years but I had this comforting feeling in the back of my mind that while the lads in the national team, with the exception of three or four, have little or no technical ability, at least the coaches at home were working on correcting that problem. But I guess from reading the posts on here that is not the case. Very troubling indeed to think that for midfield creativity in ten / fifteen years time we'll be looking at young fellas similar to Glenn Whelan and Keith Andrews. Something has to be done by the FAI to fix this poverty in the Irish game."
Just looked at the beginning of this thread and found this post from a year ago. In light of what has happened to the Irish midfield in the past week well.......... And in light of everyone on here calling for a new focus on the technical side of the game, then the problem is more acute than ever. I also read a post on here about kids playing in Dublin who are winning leagues by the long ball game and are playing 11 a side at a young age. Those two together go a long way to explaining the problem.
I can't believe that coaches at home are still coaching the long ball game. Just boggles the mind. Also blows the mind that kids are playing 11 aside before the age of 14. That's a recipe for disaster also.
I can tell you that I learned more about football in six months in America then I did in 23 years at home. Playing against different ethnic groups you very quickly saw the flaws in the long ball game when chasing shadows in 100 degrees of heat.
Here's an obvious illustration of the problem
http://www.belvederefc.com/honours/t...binet.910.html
http://cherryorchardfc.ie/honours.html
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