Think their crew is know as the Bala Clavers.
Brilliant 👏Originally Posted by placid casual
They will be no match for the Garvoge Galoots.
I don't think we'll beeat Riga, but there'd be very little chance of us beating Ružomberok, if we assume they get through. That's a real step up in quality.
I'm more concerned that we won't be able to beat Drogs tomorrow evening, never mind anyone in Europe.
If Derry can get any sort of form back, they should be beating Riga. They are 4th in the Latvian league. The played Dundalk 3 years ago, not the same team.
These are the exact teams LOI should be beaten.
The issue we have in the LOI - and I say this as someone who supports a Summer season - is that there is an 8mth gap between when our teams qualify for Europe and when they play. For those leagues with a more traditional Winter season its roughly 2 months. So LOI clubs are much more likely to be a different team playing in different form by the time they fulfil European fixtures. This is of course balanced to some extent by the fact that our clubs are mid-season and so match fit, sharper etc. But there is often quite a difference between the LOI team who qualified for Europe and the team who gets to play in it - both in personnel and particularly in form.
Not sure I'd be as dismissive of the Latvian league, and we're third in the LoI, if they were looking at it that way.
Hopefully I'm wrong, but based on our current form, I can't be confident.
Latvia are above us in the country co-efficients, and Riga are above us in the club one. It's a team LoI clubs could beat, but on paper, they're better than us.
Have you ever won the treble?
They've held Celtic, Copenhagen and Malmö to one goal defeats in the last couple of years; they seem decent enough.
Course against that they lost to Dundalk and also to that Gibraltar team last year.
It's the kind of tie we should be winning to show progress as a league alright, but it's hard not to view Riga as favourites. They're fourth in the league but they've won 11 of 16 games; it's tight at the top and then there's a huge drop-off after them
but how unique is that to Ireland's situation? we are not the only ones with a summer season like this..?
but exactly. I mean how is it that small "less developed" countries from the Baltics or Balkans/Eastern Europe are able to perform on this stage better than us.
Riga is the capital and has more people than Derry so sure, but Latvia also has 1.9 million people. Latvia is not exactly a country known for its footballing culture.
Slovenia has a population of 2 million, Murska Soboto has 11,000 people; what would the LOI equivalent be (even accounting for GAA/Rugby competition)?
I mean Bulgaria does have 6 million people but Razgrad the home of Ludogrets has 40,000 people... I mean I get that it seems that there is some dodgy/shady dealings and investments at play behind the scenes but it still baffles me that we cant be on the same level of a country like Slovakia (not to mention the Scandanavian countries)
I think we all know the reasons why domestic football is way behind. There are far too many to list, but a big reason was that our FAI did not support the league in the way that it should have.
A key one for me is transfer fees.
We sell our players to England early for pennies, partly because there isn't really a pro route here. (There's pro players obviously, but how many 19s players would be looking at getting a pro deal?) In most other countries in Europe, players stay domestically until they're 21/22. Means a much bigger transfer fee and that gets reinvested into the league.
Imagine where we'd be with a Bazunu a year.
(Obviously it helps that the same Euro money and transfer fee income will stretch further in eastern Europe, where a player can be full-time on less)
There's other factors of course, but that's a key one we need to address
Just seen actually that Jurkovskis is with FC Riga now - he was Dundalk last year.
FC Riga are effectively Skonto Riga, who were the dominant side of the 90s and 00s.
I was at a CL qualifier in 1997 in the Nou Camp. Barca vs Skonto, and Barca were pushed all the way.Skonto took the lead twice only for Stoichkov to score a last minute penalty winner. God that was a rubbish Barca team but it was nearly a huge scalp Euro wise too.
You couldn't be to confident Derry would beat that skonto team now.
Fitness might be decisive in the end I guess most of them.are in their 50s now.
🤣🤣
I was at both home and away games v Skonto and it wasn't a brilliant Derry team at the time but Derry were the better team in both games and rightfully went through.
https://mobile.twitter.com/shelsfc/s...94382082981889
“Shelbourne will face Pomurje Beltinci (SVN) in our semi-final of Group One in this year's UEFA Women's Champions League “
Irish by birth ,Harps by the grace of god.
Quite quiet on here considering a big week ahead.
What’s the chances of any of the games on TV. Could RTE cause heart attacks and show the Shams game?
"Now jump up there and stuff that son of a bitch in the basket, chief"
Yeah Rovers game is on RTÉ….
Irish by birth ,Harps by the grace of god.
What day is that Joey B?
Gary Cronin is he the right man to manage Longford Town?
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