2023 UEFA Under-21 Championship

[Eirambler]

It's really not that strong these days. Behind the Czech, Cypriot, Serbian and Croatian leagues, among others in terms of the UEFA coefficients. Miles behind Scotland, for example.

I wouldn't worry too much personally about whether our players have as many first team games behind them as the Swiss when they're only playing and training at that level. Arguably a player is better off being in an elite English academy as long as they are combining that with first team game time on loan between ages 19 and 22.

The problem is the players that don't get loan moves for various reasons, Conor Coventry and Gavin Kilkenny being examples of this. They lose out a bit. But on the other hand the likes of Nathan Collins and Dara O'Shea are probably getting a much better footballing education in England than they would get playing in some backwater like the Swiss league, so I'd say it balances out in the end.

I would say the focus in Ireland needs to be more about the standard of footballing education provided up to the age of 18. I'd be less concerned about developing the LoI for older players, really by 18 they need to be going to a better league than we can ever hope to develop anyway given our limited population and competition from other sports domestically.

[pineapple stu]

I would say the focus in Ireland needs to be more about the standard of footballing education provided up to the age of 18. I'd be less concerned about developing the LoI for older players, really by 18 they need to be going to a better league than we can ever hope to develop anyway given our limited population and competition from other sports domestically.

I'd give it a couple of years older than that - by 21 they need to be going to a better league. It'd be interesting to see the success rates of academies versus smaller professional clubs; I don't think the academies are necessarily the best option.

But you can't ignore developing the LoI for older players though. The whole point would be that promising young players have a proper (senior) league to move into early in their careers. You can't have that if you don't develop it for older players (which really comes down to offering higher wages). The LoI is one of the youngest leagues in Europe and that's actually not a good thing.

[Bungle]

I think there is lots to be hopeful of in terns of player development in the last few years. Our youth teams were always competitive to be fair, but there has been a positive improvement in the quality of young players and the quality of the football that they play.

Our u21s are likely to have qualified for the Euros were it not for Kenny getting the main gig and a lot of the best u21s following him into the senior squad.

Right now, I'd put our senior team at the level of a low to mid pot 4 quality side. It may take another few years before we become even reasonably competitve, although the emergence of even one world class player or several very good players could make that happen faster.

Parrott looked an outstanding player at 15, 16 and 17 tearing the best defenders in Europe at his age a new one. Right now, he looks a fairly talented 19 year old. I actually still think he could become a very good player, but he is a cautionary tale for us and we have had plenty of them down the years. Zefi, Moran or Ferguson could get the same lessons taught to them when they end up in men's football at 18 or 19, but the encouraging thing is that if we keep producing big numbers of very talented players, it should eventually stick.

[pineapple stu]

I think there is lots to be hopeful of in terns of player development in the last few years.

I think you're right, although as a sentiment it's obviously a fairly low bar, but at the same time I'd worry that there's an element of familiarity in that. Are we convincing ourselves our underage players are good because they're signed to big clubs and we're following their careers? Meanwhile someone like Noah Okofor plays 50 games for FC Basel, signs for Red Bull Salzburg on that back of that and has 13 goals in 38 games - that doesn't be on our radar and so we're not really comparing ourselves with other countries.

The Danish game will be interesting - again, they've plenty of players who've 40-50 games in the Danish league under their belts already.

[DeLorean]

Full game here -

[Bungle]

I think you're right, although as a sentiment it's obviously a fairly low bar, but at the same time I'd worry that there's an element of familiarity in that. Are we convincing ourselves our underage players are good because they're signed to big clubs and we're following their careers? Meanwhile someone like Noah Okofor plays 50 games for FC Basel, signs for Red Bull Salzburg on that back of that and has 13 goals in 38 games - that doesn't be on our radar and so we're not really comparing ourselves with other countries.

The Danish game will be interesting - again, they've plenty of players who've 40-50 games in the Danish league under their belts already.

Yeah good points. The Danish and Swiss leagues might not be world class, but they are excellent breeding grounds for talent, with a decent level of football and I would imagine very good facilities.

My feeling is that our lads often seem to miss that level of men's football, which really grows a player. They might be playing u23 football for big clubs and ripping up trees but playing week in week out in league 1 or the Dutch/Swiss/Danish etc leagues are what grows a player. Troy is an example of that.

One thing I do think is that the Swiss and Danish have very good senior teams with few lads under 21 breaking through because their squads contain very good older players. Right now, we are an absolutely mediocre senior team with some excellent talents like O'Shea and Knight in the senior squad. I do think that could make our u21 team weaker in the next few years because there is very limited quality from age 23-30 in the team. Still once we can keep producing genuine talents like that in every calendar year, I would be more confident moving forward.

[pineapple stu]

One thing I do think is that the Swiss and Danish have very good senior teams with few lads under 21 breaking through because their squads contain very good older players.

I'd agree with that - but to me that's just a natural symptom of our failure to nurture talent domestically.

[CSAD]

That's a bit of a leap of faith in fairness.

Also a big difference between playing Conference North and Swiss Super League. Yes, playing games is important, but it's not the be all and end all. The level matters too.


I did take it into consideration when I mentioned the senior squad in my original post. The U21s in the senior squad with fewer league games include Bazunu, Parrott, O'Connor, Omibamidele, Molumby, Knight and Idah. The U21s in the senior squad with more league games are...no-one. Then you can add in Kelleher, Travers and Connolly who have also played fewer games and I'm not sure if they're still eligible.

But we have to go down the foreign academy route because we don't have a sufficiently strong domestic league to bring new players into, and other nations are showing us up for that. We can't keep putting all our eggs in one basket.

The level definitely matters but more so if the gap is substantial like PL to L2. While the Swiss league is a higher standard the gap isn’t substantial enough to make a significant difference at that age, Ollie Watkins and Calvert Lewin were doing similar and honestly were that much better at that age and they both went on to be excellent players, not saying he will be that level necessarily but it’s still possible that he could be a good PL player at the very least. Different strokes for different folks, some prefer being a PL set up and some prefer to play games and work their way up, there’s no right or wrong way to go about it.

[CSAD]

Yeah good points. The Danish and Swiss leagues might not be world class, but they are excellent breeding grounds for talent, with a decent level of football and I would imagine very good facilities.

My feeling is that our lads often seem to miss that level of men's football, which really grows a player. They might be playing u23 football for big clubs and ripping up trees but playing week in week out in league 1 or the Dutch/Swiss/Danish etc leagues are what grows a player. Troy is an example of that.

One thing I do think is that the Swiss and Danish have very good senior teams with few lads under 21 breaking through because their squads contain very good older players. Right now, we are an absolutely mediocre senior team with some excellent talents like O'Shea and Knight in the senior squad. I do think that could make our u21 team weaker in the next few years because there is very limited quality from age 23-30 in the team. Still once we can keep producing genuine talents like that in every calendar year, I would be more confident moving forward.

I think our upcoming u21s could be made weaker, hopefully if enough break through then we don’t need to puller the following u21s group.

[pineapple stu]

The level definitely matters but more so if the gap is substantial like PL to L2. While the Swiss league is a higher standard the gap isn’t substantial enough to make a significant difference at that age

Well the problem is that our U21s are playing the U23s Premier League or reserve football. That then is a substantial gap to the Swiss league. Kayode - I'd discount his Conference North time, but yeah, L2 is fine. But he's very much the exception.

The Danish side looks a lot stronger than the Swiss side - they've more players with more time in a better league. How much they'll be focussed on their qualifier against Germany is another matter of course, but I suspect we'll be in for a long afternoon against them.

[ifk101]

The Danish side looks a lot stronger than the Swiss side - they've more players with more time in a better league. How much they'll be focussed on their qualifier against Germany is another matter of course, but I suspect we'll be in for a long afternoon against them.

Doom and gloom again. Playing the Danish U20 side btw.

[pineapple stu]

Doom and gloom is fairly appropriate given our current problems I think.

Nice of the Danish to go a bit easy on us though

[ifk101]

Doom and gloom is fairly appropriate given our current problems I think.

At senior level sure.

Not sure it's warranted for a U21 training camp. We've promoted the "cream" of this age group to the seniors already so expectations shouldn't be too high.

[pineapple stu]

True, but I did include them when noting the Swiss (and Danish) players with a lot more first-team experience than even our younger senior players.

[ifk101]

True, but I did include them when noting the Swiss (and Danish) players with a lot more first-team experience than even our younger senior players.

Sure, but these clubs have smaller budgets than your standard run of the mill Championship club. Unclear if the Danish/ Swiss players would fare better than our players in the English league system. For example, Brighton signed a Swiss player a few months older than Aaron Connolly with 90 first team games at his Swiss club – has played just 160mins with Brighton since signing in October but still made the Swiss Euros squad. (Aaron Connolly has more minutes this season for Brighton than him btw).

[pineapple stu]

I'm loathe to focus on individual cases too much - I could cite Mads Roerslev in reply, who moved from Copenhagen to Brentford and has broken into the first team, culminating in a play-off final win - which is why I tried to look at an overall view of how much first-team football our players were playing compared to Denmark/Switzerland (being our current U21s opponents; I'm not sure how the Australian club system works but I think many of their players got some kind of B team experience in a regional league).

And with 26 in the Euro squads this year, you can probably afford to call up someone for experience, to build on the 100 domestic games he's played and help in his development. We're using those players as the basis of our squad, which probably is just hitting morale at this stage.

We know that most European players start out in their domestic leagues before moving abroad at around 21/22. We're very much an exception in that regard, and we're going backwards very rapidly. I think it's reasonable to suggest there's a correlation there, and the basis of that is the first-team, senior, experience which our players just aren't getting.

I'm not sure what's your point about the respective budgets?

[Bungle]

I think our upcoming u21s could be made weaker, hopefully if enough break through then we don’t need to puller the following u21s group.

Yeah the batch that have been getting called to the senior team were a very good batch by u21 standards but it's going to be a rough one for what is left behind. We have some excellent lads coming through that might offset it a little but optimistic to think that they can mix it with the very good sides like Croatia, Serbia, Denmark and Switzerland at u21 level let alone the Spains, Portugals and Frances of this world, who will have a lot of lads playing at a very high level and they might be 17 or 18. Entirely possible we have a breakout star like Moran or Ferguson who completely bypass the u21s. Much less likely to happen with a Switzerland or Denmark.

[CSAD]

Yeah the batch that have been getting called to the senior team were a very good batch by u21 standards but it's going to be a rough one for what is left behind. We have some excellent lads coming through that might offset it a little but optimistic to think that they can mix it with the very good sides like Croatia, Serbia, Denmark and Switzerland at u21 level let alone the Spains, Portugals and Frances of this world, who will have a lot of lads playing at a very high level and they might be 17 or 18. Entirely possible we have a breakout star like Moran or Ferguson who completely bypass the u21s. Much less likely to happen with a Switzerland or Denmark.

Yeah and even without those players it’s still a decent batch that could mix it with most teams but to compete with the second tier u21 nations such as the ones you mentioned we will need our better ones available as the other nations are unlikely to be pulling 10 players from the squad. What needs to be done is develop a culture across the age groups, which in fairness since Kenny took over I think is being done, as that will help us with consistency when a player drops out. From what I have seen from Switzerland and Denmark while they have been very consistent it’s largely been them just finishing on the right side of the score line rather than bartering team. Whereas Croatia and Serbia who don’t really have a culture set up throughout the age groups you can see do struggle for consistency in results. From looking at these teams you can definitely see that familiarity playing a role.

[paul_oshea]

What does "develop a culture across the age groups" mean ?!

[CraftyToePoke]

What does "develop a culture across the age groups" mean ?!

Well Paulo, as I understand it, its a little like what Jack Charlton ( your hero ) did soon after taking over when he went in the 21s dressing room uninvited, dictated his methodology, undermined the manager and destroyed a culture, a footballing one. But we all got to sing Ole Ole get really drunk and some even ended up on the telly so it all turned out ok. Till now.

Its like that, but in reverse, if you get me ?