I think it is fair to say that most national associations focus on the U21 and senior setups and don't place too much importance on age categories below that. The FAI in comparison has put a lot of effort - professional effort - into the under age teams. There is a noticeable step in in standard from U18, U19 to the U21 side, we haven't been able to crack the U21 nut. In fairness to Givens he has made an distinct improvement over Setters and Evans. I haven't seen enough U21 games to guess what the problem is.
A large part of the problem is that Givens is an appalling manager.
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