From a great comeback to an Armenian disaster

After all the great positivity surrounding our hopes of qualifying for a first men’s World Cup since 2002 in the build-up to the 2026 qualification campaign, all it took for our dreams to be crumbled was seventy-two hours. The great comeback against Hungary, after being 2-0 down within fifteen minutes, gave us a chance heading to Armenia, where we were facing a side ranked forty-five places below us in the FIFA World Rankings. Anyone who watched the game last Tuesday would have thought the rankings were the opposite. Armenia were comfortable victors on the night and full value for their 3-1win. In truth, only for Caoimhin Kelleher it could have been five or six one to the Armenians.

The biggest surprise in all this is that we were surprised by the results over the two games. The Football Association of Ireland (FAI) has faced consistent criticism for decades over its approach to player development, and many of these structural issues have contributed to the Republic of Ireland’s struggles in consistently qualifying for major tournaments (World Cup and Euros).

AN OVER-RELIANT ‘MODEL’

For years in the FAI, there was a short-term focus rather than a long-term outlook on the youth structures in the country. Our ‘model’, if you can even call it that, seemed to be over-reliant on English clubs to develop our players when they went over to the UK at 16 years old, and hope for the best from that. Money was overspent on the administration side rather than invested into the youth and grassroots levels, and over time, when the players weren’t developed by the English academies, it meant that we had less players playing in the Premier League, which played its part in our struggles at the senior level in qualifying for tournaments.

There has been a lot of change now in the FAI, and in the past week, a new CEO and Technical Director have been announced. John Martin is the CEO, while Shane Robinson is the Technical Director. Both John and Shane are ex-League of Ireland players and were former teammates of mine at Shamrock Rovers. Their appointments can only be good news for the League of Ireland and the grassroots level, too. The League of Ireland has been growing a lot recently and has had some success with Shamrock Rovers and Shelbourne making the group stages in the Europa Conference League this year, to add to Rovers making it last year too. Before all that success for the two clubs, they both invested in their youth structures, and they are reaping the benefits of it now.

Both John and Shane were excellent teammates, especially with the younger players. They were constantly on the lookout for us, which gives me hope for the FAI going forward under their guidance. Of course, it won’t be just down to them, so others need to come on board and be aligned to them for it to be a success.

BIG MANAGERIAL DECISION

In the short term, the next big decision that the FAI has to make is whether to let Heimir Hallgrimsson see out the remainder of the campaign and his contract or to appoint a new manager. Given the links that both John and Shane have with Shamrock Rovers, both as administrators, it is natural that Shamrock Rovers manager Stephen Bradley will be linked as a possible replacement.

The job that he has done with Rovers both domestically and in Europe is brilliant. The belief he has had in young players at the club has made the club a lot of money. He wasn’t afraid to put a 15-year-old Gavin Bazunu into the first team, and he reaped the benefits of it. Bradley also has a great record of getting the best out of his players, and ones that others seemed to have question marks over. The negative of appointing Bradley is how the supporters who don’t like the League of Ireland will react. They were very vocal in their annoyance at Stephen Kenny’s appointment and throughout his tenure, and were pleased when he eventually lost his job. Hallgrimsson hasn’t been criticised half as much as Kenny was, perhaps because of his record at Iceland before he took the Irish job, but maybe not, some people see that Kenny wasn’t the problem all along but the bigger picture of us not having the players or developing them at home ourselves being the biggest problem.

There is a big job at hand for John Martin, especially as the CEO, and he will be putting out some historic fires and cleaning up the mess of those that went before him, but I firmly believe he is the right man for the job. Hopefully, I am right and there is a brighter future ahead for Irish supporters and Irish football in general.