Ok, so we agree on that. So O'Neill and Keane are gone in a month's time. Now let's put some building blocks in place.
My vision of a proper national team is one which is similar to Croatia, Uruguay or Denmark. Why? Because those teams have players (all eleven who take to the pitch and everyone on the bench) who can receive and distribute the ball, retain possession, and threaten their opponents with a few short intelligent passes.
In addition, I pick these three countries because they have populations which are close or quite close to our own. In the case of Croatia and Uruguay, I would say the funding for sport in those countries would be less than in Ireland (I believe that is their respective economic situations?). What is so good about their coaching structure and so bad (or different) about ours? People will point to Gaelic games and rugby reducing the pool of soccer players in Ireland, but once those kids from the Irish diaspora are factored in, then I would say we are on level terms if not better off.
The question we must ask ourselves then, is if we have a lot more going for ourselves than the aforementioned countries, why are we so far behind them in terms of ability?
Answer, it all comes back to organisation and coaching. I have long since said on this forum, that we need to import youth coaches from South America and Africa (I would add Croatia to that list) and God knows John Delaney could forgo a couple of Euros from his salary to make that happen. Why, because that is where all the top quality players in European football are coming from. There are some basics they are teaching their kids which make them far better players than ours, N. Ireland's, Scotland's, Wales's and England's (albeit with the latter seeming to make far more progress lately). I played in the LOI many moons ago, and I can tell you that I learned more in the six months after leaving Ireland, than I did in my whole life to that point. On the evidence of Ireland's performances in the Aviva on Saturday and Tuesday, not much has changed in that regard - at least with our senior players.
There are some encouraging signs on the horizon with our underage teams (and we're seeing the results to match) but would it kill the FAI to begin a development program for the country's top tier league to accommodate those kids who are showing promise. The chicken and egg situation for the LOI is that people will not come out to watch rubbish football and the league can't produce top drawer football without some sort of a fan base to sustain its better players. Neither party is wrong. The league has to create a market for itself - there were encouraging flirtations with European football over the last few years with Dundalk and Shamrock Rovers, but that star has since faded. In fairness to the Irish fans, they did get behind both of those teams when they succeeded in Europe. And that has to be the goal going forward - perennial improvement of LOI clubs on the European stage. A lot better people than I have called for the development of the domestic game in Ireland. Surely now is the time to answer those calls.
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