Originally Posted by
elatedscum
Makes a lot of sense in that respect. The 2002 kids missed their U19 campaign and the last campaign they were involved in was May 2019 in the u17 euros. Given the 21s features players from 2000 onwards, they're at the bottom of the pile and might only get call-ups in 2023.
I've long argued for a u20s squad to play friendlies like most big European sides have. If you look at the kids from 2000 who are now members of the u21s, their last involvement for ireland was in summer 2019 in the Euros and the 2001 kids were last involved in November 2001 in the qualification for the u19s and it has nothing to do with Covid. The likes of Maher, Lyons, Brennan, Regba from 2000 haven't played at all and guys like Kayode and Ferry were just involved in the last squad, where we were already knocked out. Same with the 2001 kids: Smallbone and McGuinness were used in the final squad, Wright, Noss, Tierney, Cassidy, Watson, McEntee, Bowden, Coffey, Gilbert, Ogungbo, McEneff and Lewis - they all weren't involved.
In a normal year, all the kids from 2002 could have camps with say 2 friendlies per camp, which would would get you 10 games a year at u20. would really help with the following u21 campaign and would keep kids involved in a way, you can't when you've got 3-4 age groups competing for one squad.
Also unusual that there are 4 players involved in both training squads, not sure if that's because they stood out most (2 born in ireland and 2 born in england). I assume the reason that Ollie O'Neill and the likes were in squad 2 and Armstrong was in squad 1 was that clubs didn't allow them to attend outside an international window...
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