2025 UEFA European Under-21 Championship

[TonyD]

Is cutoff date 1st Jan 2004 for next qualifiers? Curtis, Abankwah, Connor O'Brien, Sean Grehan, Alex Murphy, Adam Murphy, McJannet, Vata, O'Mahony, Franco Umeh, Melia have all gotten caps and are eligible from what I can see?

Mason Melia hasn’t got an U21 cap yet. This squad was his first call up before he unfortunately had to withdraw with injury.

[Eirambler]

An awful lot of this is spoken in the future tense. Have they already given him another contract and not told anyone, or is he just being extremely presumptuous here?

Looking forward

“I’ll always be excited working with Irish talent. We do have to put this campaign in perspective that Norway, Italy and Türkiye are all very good teams and when the draw was made we knew it was a stern challenge. I was delighted with the challenge, I want our group of players to be tested and I thought they were outstanding throughout the campaign.

“If you were to ask me what type of draw I’d like, I’d be happy with a challenging draw because I believe that will bring out the best in our players. I’m really pleased we got a lot of players in this year who can go again next year because that puts us in a much stronger place than this time two years ago.”

[Razors left peg]

An awful lot of this is spoken in the future tense. Have they already given him another contract and not told anyone, or is he just being extremely presumptuous here?

This is the same organization that gave Don Givens the U21 job for 10 years, Crawford will be there for a long time yet

[elatedscum]

There is certainly promise in that U21 team but would push back a bit on describing it as “special” or “great”. Don’t think there is a player in the team banging the door for inclusion in the senior squad, and quite a few are 21/ 22 years of age – an age at which we do have history of capping players. Would say they need a season or two more of senior football with their clubs before becoming real options. But that’s no surprise really, we have already promoted the exceptional players from that age group.

That’s almost always the way when it comes to this time in a campaign. Cause you’re talking lads born in 2002 and 2003, so they’ll all be 20-22 at the end of the campaign.

I more meant the 2002 and 2003 group as a whole. You’ve got 10 lads who I think will make a senior international appearance probably the next 18 months:

1. Gavin Bazunu
2. Andrew Omobamidele
3. Anselmo Garcia-McNulty
4. Joe Hodge
5. Bosun Lawal
6. Andy Moran
7. Festy Ebosele
8. Tom Cannon
9. Troy Parrott
10. Sinclair Armstrong

Then you’ve got another 7 lads who have a decent chance of being internationals at some point. The likes of Sean Roughan, Aidamo Emakhu, Baba Adeeko, Killian Phillips, Emmanuel Adegboyega, Tyler Goodrham and Tayo Adaramola.

Then there’s another 14 lads who I’d describe as long shots / extreme long shots. Guys like Jonny Kenny, Zak Gilsenen, John Patrick, Tony Springett, Connor O’Riordan, Matt Healy, Armstrong Okoflex etc. A mixture of guys who had the ability but made bad career choices or guys who got bad injuries at the wrong time or maybe guys who just lost their way or weren’t quite good enough and some keepers who you wouldn’t rule out cause keeper development can work later than the rest (see Darren Randolph, David Forde). You might get maybe 2 of those 14 to get to the level. Finally there’s about 44 lads who have received call-ups at some point between u17 and u21 who I think we can close the book on.

Anyway - to me that’s a very high number coming through from those 2 years. This and the 2000/2001 groups are outliers in that respect and they always have been. I think we’ve identified that since about 2017.

2004 kids are kind of a mystery cause of covid, cause they didn’t have an u17 group - so they only had the u19 qualifiers and a lot of 2005 kids were called up for that, as is often Tom Mohan’s way. But overall comparing the two groups and looking at the squad overall, I think we will be weaker at the back and in midfield and maybe stronger out wide and at similar level in goal and up front.

[Razors left peg]

At this point I think its a stretch to say Hodge will play for the senior team within 18 months. He is brilliant at u21 level but his club career is yet to get going and hes showing a lot of similarities to Conor Coventry at this stage. Garcia McNulty will have to improve quite a bit too, I thought he was fairly poor in these 2 games. His lack of pace and size is starting to show a bit. The rest Id agree with

[elatedscum]

At this point I think it’s a stretch to say Hodge will play for the senior team within 18 months. He is brilliant at u21 level but his club career is yet to get going and hes showing a lot of similarities to Conor Coventry at this stage. Garcia McNulty will have to improve quite a bit too, I thought he was fairly poor in these 2 games. His lack of pace and size is starting to show a bit. The rest Id agree with

I may well be proven wrong. Biggest issue for Hodge has been injuries. Compared to Coventry, I just think he has a degree of vision that Coventry doesn’t. Coventry’s best case scenario has always been Josh Cullen for me - whereas I think Hodge still has the potential to give us something more, to maybe be one of the midfielders we’ve lacked. You’d probably need him to have a healthy and successful loan in League 1 and back that up next season with a good loan in the championship or an equivalent league. Saying that, he’s looked the best midfielder we’ve had at 21s level since Declan, so injuries aside, I can’t see him failing to make the step up.

As for Anselmo, it’s very much the Liam Scales mold. Good footballing left footed centre half, which is hard to come by. Capable of playing left back as well, which is a pretty easy route to the national set up (although long term, don’t think the pace and attacking threat plays at that position) - currently playing at the same level as Troy. I know it was a poor camp for Anselmo in both games but he’s had a really strong campaign and I think he’s too good of a footballer to not make the step up and I think 18 months of physical maturation should do it for him

[ifk101]

That’s almost always the way when it comes to this time in a campaign. Cause you’re talking lads born in 2002 and 2003, so they’ll all be 20-22 at the end of the campaign.

I more meant the 2002 and 2003 group as a whole.

Fair enough. Misunderstood the initial post.

Overall it’s a group that we threw away. We threw away 2 points against Norway, Italy and Latvia, all in Ireland. We really should have won all 3 of those games. Conceded a 96th minute equaliser against Italy and a 93rd minute equaliser against Norway - both games where better managerial decisions would have helped us close out the game. Then against Latvia we missed sitters and could have easily finished that game before we let them back into it. There were seriously questionable team/squad selection decisions. Also you’d question the decision to play it in Dublin, 2 hours before the senior team plays - ensuring that no one came to the game.

Going back to this comment, I do agree we threw it away but to balance out the above, we scored a late winner away to Turkey, and we had a very late equaliser and winner at home to the same opposition. If we question the managerial decisions leading to the late goals conceded, can we offer managerial praise for the late goals scored?

Need to also question player discipline – we conceded 4 penalties in 10 games, very high probability penalties are scored. Don’t think Norway conceded any penalties in their games.

As much as the late goals at home to Italy and Norway sting, the home draw against Latvia was the big result – once we got the lead in that game we shouldn’t be losing. But soft defending and a goalkeeper mistake cost us. Sure, Crawford got decisions and selections wrong – that’s going to happen with any manager. Did he get too many decisions and selections wrong – debatable for me. Think there needs to be a slightly more critical eye on the players.

[Eirambler]

I just think he's too conservative. Tries too much to protect scorelines, which is why we concede so many late goals. Makes some crazy selection decisions also, Johnny Kenny was his big blind spot in this campaign. He did some good things, but he's not in the class of Vata and Emakhu and will likely land well below O'Mahony as well. He was picked or brought on over better players far too often.

Was still seeing Lawal as a centre back after Fleetwood had put him back into midfield as well. Just doesn't seem to be a good reader of the game. Also likes to spin and rewrite history judging by his interviews and programme notes. Just a poor manager all around.

[ifk101]

Eirambler, I've felt plenty of frustration in the past. But, taking this qualification campaign on its own merits, we are no less conservative than Norway or Italy. Both Norway and Italy have a higher possession percentage than us, but we are still 50%+ overall. We took a higher average number of shots on goal than both Italy and Norway - what lets us down is our shot conversion percentage which is 3 and 4 percentage points lower than both Italy and Norway. We were a bit softer defensively in terms of clean sheets than both Norway and especially Italy, but noticeably we conceded 4 penalties, Italy just one, and Norway zero conceded penalties. (Basing the above on this link - https://footystats.org/clubs/republi...and-u21-666717)

And agree on the selection decisions you mention. But doesn't everyone have their own opinion these? Rarely have I fully agreed with selection for senior games for example.

[Eirambler]

It's not that he's conservative from the off though. A typical Crawford team will generally start well, get into a good position in the game, and it's then that the problems start. So his overall stats in terms of possession, shots etc are probably fine, it's the game management that's the issue.

He can't seem to get away from an attitude of "what we have we hold". Except, usually when it matters most, we don't hold it. He moves his teams away from what they were doing well, in to a much more conservative game plan, and we pay the price late on. It's why he has qualified for nothing with some of the most talented under 21 squads we've ever had.

[Razors left peg]

I may well be proven wrong. Biggest issue for Hodge has been injuries. Compared to Coventry, I just think he has a degree of vision that Coventry doesn’t. Coventry’s best case scenario has always been Josh Cullen for me - whereas I think Hodge still has the potential to give us something more, to maybe be one of the midfielders we’ve lacked. You’d probably need him to have a healthy and successful loan in League 1 and back that up next season with a good loan in the championship or an equivalent league. Saying that, he’s looked the best midfielder we’ve had at 21s level since Declan, so injuries aside, I can’t see him failing to make the step up.

As for Anselmo, it’s very much the Liam Scales mold. Good footballing left footed centre half, which is hard to come by. Capable of playing left back as well, which is a pretty easy route to the national set up (although long term, don’t think the pace and attacking threat plays at that position) - currently playing at the same level as Troy. I know it was a poor camp for Anselmo in both games but he’s had a really strong campaign and I think he’s too good of a footballer to not make the step up and I think 18 months of physical maturation should do it for him

At under 21 level Hodge is fantastic, he definitely has a bit more class than most and we badly missed him this window. His club career needs to start kicking off a bit soon though, hes now an injury prone 22 year old whos not had regular football at any level yet for one reason or another and is not going to miss a lot of football this season too. I just have doubts that he's physically able to make the step up to mens football as much as anything

[tetsujin1979]

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