Republic of Ireland General Discussion Thread 2025 [CLOSED THREAD]

Overall fairly happy with the appointment of Hallgrimsson, he has experience of managing and achieving with nations similar to ourselves, has qualified and managed at international tournaments and seems like a nice enough, media savvy fella. I think he is about as good as we could've hoped for and I'm happy it's someone with a complete set of fresh eyes on Irish football. In the past we have had a number of managers who have probably held too much loyalty to certain players, Heimir is a complete clean slate and will want to focus on getting us well drilled and competitive as soon as possible. Will be interesting to see who he selects in his first squad/XI when it comes around.

We could always go down to Group D if we fail to top a group at Group C.

Worth noting he didn't say "since the start of this year", he said "since earlier this year" which is obviously a bit different. Think it's safe to say this is not the person who they were supposedly close to announcing back in April, so I would guess 'earlier this year' means Hallgrimsson was the person they identified right after that.

Much like the other options like Sagnol, Hallgrimsson was in an international job at the time with an upcoming tournament… all in all, as nice as it would have been to get someone in for the friendlies, I think they're better having waited for a better experienced option to become available over appointing someone they weren't happy with just for the sake of it.

“FAI director of football Marc Canham has claimed Hallgrimsson became Ireland's number one target at the start of 2024: "We are thrilled to announce Heimir as our new head coach. Earlier this year, we identified Heimir as our number one candidate whose capabilities and experience aligned with our criteria.”

Above is what it says in the RTE report; “start of 2024”, Canham says earlier in the year right enough but your guess that it was after April is just that; guesswork. Worth noting.

In my opinion they turned away better candidates who declared interest in the job. Maybe he was a financially better option? He has experience and the profile of style of play that achieved some success with Iceland that could see a return to a more pragmatic style that I'm certainly not opposed to as long as results improve but more than a few here did a lot of moaning about over the years. We'll see how he goes, he could be a good appointment, who knows, guesswork.

I don't see what the other "criteria" that Canham and the FAI were on about re a some kind of overarching role re development of football in Ireland. If they mean Hallgrimsson will turn up at Under 20 and other underage games and have a few meetings with the youth team coaches that's hardly worth noting.

You'd hope so. But this is the Irish media. So we'll see.

Yeah the time to get relegated to League C would have been a few years ago but unfortunately they reorganized things. We've slipped 8 or 9 places in the Uefa rankings in the last four years and we need that to change. Thankfully for us it's now top 24 rather than top 20 to make second seeds.

It's madness to suggest now that we further slip down the rankings in the hopes we can win a League C group and get the playoff spot.

Especially when you consider that if Hallgrimsson gets us hard to beat again we could sneak back into second seeds. Some groups will only have four teams. Get a four team Euro group where the top two automatically qualify as second seeds is a better chance of qualifying than trying to get through League C.

Lennon Coleman Hughton. Any of those guys had a higher profile in my opinion, maybe they were more expensive?

We’ve appointed Hallgrimsson and I wish him all the best and hopefully he’ll be a successful appointment, I’m not sure he fits the criteria of what the FAI were initially saying they wanted though? It felt like they were after a coach with fresh ideas about the game and a vision about how the future of Ireland’s football will be shaped. Hallgrimsson is a 57 year old former Iceland team manager who has just completed a reportedly unsuccessful stint with Jamaica. Hardly fits that billing, maybe the FAI were just talking a lot of ould guff.

As I say he does come with some experience and credentials so hopefully he’ll do well.

I'm exactly in the same boat as you. It was a pox when they reorganised it after that first campaign. I feel like we're just like Rochdale back in the 90s. Not good enough to get promoted but not bad enough to get relegated and we're just in this limbo and stasis. And boredom.

I didn't realise they had declared an interest. It was hard to keep up to be honest with all the rumours and bookies favourites out there.

I view them as pretty much the same level as what we have got now. Wouldn't be delighted or upset by any of them.

The more I read about Hallgrimsson, the more I'm behind his appointment.

Very happy, and looking forward to the new campaign.

Where did I say I was "down on it"? Don't put words in my mouth.

I'm discussing the appointment in the context of what I saw as a botched and amateurish process.

Now that's not Hallgrimsson's fault. It's also not the first time a selection process became a bit of a mess with the FAI. Bob Paisely was the preferred candidate in the 1980's but FAI officials were bickering about it and Jack Charlton was appointed as a compromise candidate that none of them really wanted. That generally worked out ok for Jack and Ireland. I hope Hallgrimsson will be a great success.

I still think Canham is a spoofer with his overarching vision chat and his apparent aversion to giving updates to the actual media bar in house FAI interviews with underling staff asking unchallenging questions.

Yeah we can thank Uefa for further tinkering with qualifiers in giving us a chance of sneaking into second seeds.

As of June 20th we're ranked 28th in Uefa though Russia are one of the teams ahead of us so can move us up one place.

Yeah Slovenia are one of the three teams between us and 24th spot. They've had a great Euros technically drawing four games so they'll move up into second seeds before the Nations League starts.

Greece is one of the other two teams ahead of us and we actually jumped ahead a place ahead of Finland in the last rankings. So our group is gonna be tough with all three us fighting to sneak into second seeds.

Yeah would have been great to have a permanent manager in place for the last two windows but back in February Lennon was likely the only manager worth talking about that was a likely appointment available. So glad they waited in the end.

This was the Irish team in 2017 vs Iceland

3 names there I did not recognise

Press conference with Heimir and Marc Canham live on Youtube now.