QuoteYeah but he didnt get a sniff at the senior squad until he spent those 3 long months in Reading getting to Senior International standard!Originally Posted by tetsujin1979
And it's bye bye from International football.
Yeah but he didnt get a sniff at the senior squad until he spent those 3 long months in Reading getting to Senior International standard!
Its the egg and the chicken though - people will start turning up if the games are of a high quality and Irish teams start progressing more in Europe. But Irish teams won't progress unless people start going to the games and bring in large gate receipts for the teams to invest. It's a dilemma.
I think efforts are being made by the FAI to at least slow/delay the movement of young players to the UK. The regional development centers and training programmes are a step in the right direction, I think the majority of those coaching children now have at least an entrty level coaching certificate and most clubs (decent ones anyway) are willing to pay for this.
The gap between junior football and the National League is the single biggest barrier to player development in the country and it's an incredibly difficult issue to address. Developing the A League has at least given ambitious junior/intermediate clubs an opportunity to join a national league but it's only a tiny step in the right direction. Until the nations, intermediate and junior leagues can all be brought under one structure, with clear lines of progress, from county to region, to North/South to National League it will be very difficult to keep talented young players within our system.
Even if this pipe dream were to become reality the very nature of professional football will mean the migration of the most talented players to the richest clubs and countries, but hopefully the players left behind would be of superior technical ability and our national league would provide them with a viable career.
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Tallaght Stadium Regular
One thing that always galled me was that the huge corporate sponsors (pre-recession) like Guinness, AIB, Bank of Ireland etc. never saw fit to put their name to anything football related whereas rugby & GAA were all supported - probably quite substantially. Maybe I've got this wrong...
Anyway, it's a complex issue. On one count at least - tough financial regulation of the clubs - I applaud what the FAI are doing. Maybe the other initiatives will take time to bear fruit.
Does the FAI have a "Performance Director"? I met a guy at Chelsea recently and his job remit is to evaluate the success of the orgaisation's structures and personnel (players, making sure they are recruited properly, retained and looked after, other staff, benchmarking other organisations, determining the effectiveness of overseas trips from both a brand perspective and training purposes etc.). Is there such a role at FAI? I'd suggest not given Don Given's continued employment.
There is a Dutch bloke within the FAI that oversees youth development and has a "Performance Director" title . What exactly he does - I don't know. The FAI also have plans for an academy in Abbottstown and if this happens, we are making progress.
Was Packie Bonner not involved in something similar?
You can't spell failure without FAI
re-Bonner and Koevermans: I think that's just in relation to the performance of the players in the system.
My point is that the whole organisation should be constantly under review for achieving best practice standards, in terms of playing / coaching and administratively / commercially / organisationally. It's the type of role for someone with a MBA type background, perhaps also with senior HR or sports science or sports psychology experience.
If would be great if somebody from the FAI was willing to post a comment about this subject.
It's not the outsourcing that bothers me, many successful international teams like Portugal, Brazil and Holland have their players coming from foreign leagues. The big problem for us is that almost all of our players are being trained in England, a place with technically woeful leagues for development.
How many players trained in England or Scotland have ever been world class? The British style is to be obedient, disciplined, tackle strong and hit shots hard. Great for defensive players, woeful for technical ability with the result that everyone we send there ends up being limited confidence players with no game intelligence whatsoever. What we really need is players in other leagues so we're getting a wider range of talent.
The LOI Clubs need to be closer to the Junior clubs in their areas, that's been one of the problems in Irish Football for years, you'll get a couple of decent junior sides but they can have zero interaction with their closest LOI side, mainly because they're afraid of players being poached etc. Which is understandable but has a detrimental effect on player development.
The FAI's moves towards regional development centres is to be applauded and maybe the restrictions on young players moving (not sure if this is coming in or just proposed?) will have an impact and give the FAI the chance to really develop high class coaching facilities for young players.
I know that the development programme is a positive step, my brother is involved in Junior soccer and keeps me updated on it and I went to one of the trials when I was last at home.
The only problem I see is a lack of faith that the FAI can get something right, they have got so many things wrong so often, it's jsut hard to see them actually making it work.
I have always though that a French/Australian style centre of excellence with coaching to the standards received elsewhere in Europe would encourage kids to stay in Ireland, what it needs is one player to go on and become a start from the local acadamey and you have your poster boy to sell it to the rest.
There isn't enough money in the domestic league to keep players like Stephen Ireland and such playing here.
Nothing wrong with the best players going to where they'll earn a better living and arguably a better footballing education.
It's the level down & below that concern me more.
The issue is not loi players being in the national team, i believe players in the league should have more of a chance(i mean its madness that a team calling itself the irish international team last featured a player in a match back in 2006) but thats beside the point. all those countries develop their own players for the most part.
i agree irish need to start diversifying but this can be achieved by keeping players at home first and then the top players being sold to clubs around europe.
Again it wouldn't (from an international perspective although I'd much prefer a strong domestic league than strong national team but really both go hand and hand) be beneficial for a player of stephen irelands calibre to stay in ireland. even if we didn't have a apathetic domestic football population and had high attendances relative to our population we still couldn't provide an arena in which are top players could stay here. however as it stands, we send our middle of the road players to fecking scotland. we should be able to provide a league of a similar standing to scotland and players wouldnt really consider moving there.
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