New thread as the last thread seems to be broken.
We are a soccer mad country so you're correct.
The LOI is growing year or year though so maybe the tide is turning a little.
The real game changer would be a TV deal but we're probably 10 or 20 years from that at least.
You are correct
I think it's gonna happen. A win and a draw respectively.
it’s a result from Macedonia we want though, right? Pushing Wales down to pot 4 via the nations league.
We need; Bosnia to draw or lose in Austria
And
North Macedonia to win or draw in Wales
I suspect that it will be Wales that will let us down tonight.
Macedonia are no tomato cans.
Given Mick’s teams were solid enough but really really struggled to win games, I’d say the same outcome of a penalty shootout was probably pretty likely.
Mick 2.0 or Kenny, two lovely blokes, but two awful awful choices to be arguing about.
Best week of Irish international football at senior level in a decade.
I foolishly thought this thread would be buzzing. I’m gonna keep an eye or watch wales/bosnia games , while some fans continue to argue about who is the worse of two previous managers.
As for people saying the LOI is conference level quality , it’s prob closer to at least upper division 2, to division 1 (rovers at least). And maybe if more EPL fans supported it and stopped making excuses that “it’s crap” it would help improve the infrastructure so it can be better.
No issue with people supporting an English team, I do it myself, but “the FAI is the problem” is not the only reason Irish football is in the state it’s been. If the reported 800k + United/Liverpool fans in Ireland also supported a local team, the league would be in a different state altogether. Even if they all threw in a €100 for a LOI season pass, imagine what that could do for the league!
The championship in England is one of the top 10 supported leagues in world football. Lower leagues don’t do well just because of the EPL , English fans support English teams. The support of the larger clubs don’t affect them in the same way support of big EPL clubs from Irish fans supporting epl affects Ireland.
Support an English team but don’t be making excuses (it’s all FAIs fault) , own how that impacts Ireland in the soccer stakes if you have zero interest in Irish grass roots and/or Irish club football. There is less investment and funds for infrastructure in Irish football as there is simply less support for it. If the million plus EPL Irish fans were supporting the league you can bet even politically our youngsters would be getting state of the art facilities which greatly improves quality of the league and national team.
The argument that Mick wouldn’t have done a better job than Kenny is madness. No offence Pete, but that’s one of the worst takes I’ve seen in a long time! Maybe you’re close to Kenny so I don’t want to rub it in, but there’s absolutely no rational basis for that argument whatsoever.
Of course Mick should have managed the team in the playoff against Slovakia. I felt that at the time but with the benefit of hindsight it’s completely clear.
As someone else said, we didn’t score for a year under Kenny and had to resort to organising a friendly against Andorra to get his first win! The tactics were awful and the players clearly weren’t buying into them or Kenny as a person. Harsh to say but those are the facts.
The retro stuff isn't much better for price now that it's cool. Used get them cheap from unassuming charity shops but the lads selling them now know their worth. The USA 94 stuff is gonna go way up in price.
Have to laugh at Castore's "90s inspired" plain black Irish jersey that looks nothing like anything Ireland ever wore in the 90s.
He got us to 27th in FIFA rankings.
We went into freefall under Kenny.
Our player talent pool is so shallow I wouldn't give credit to anyone for picking players. They've no real choice. We've about 30+ players playing at a decent level.
Kenny probably went too far in picking young players though.
Retro stuff is nicer anyways! It's mad, going to games now, I'd say 2 in 3 jersies are retro. The castore stuff hasn't taken off really. And the prices are absolutely outrageous
Didn’t even notice it was sold out, that’s not good coming up to Christmas
https://shop.irelandfootball.ie/ie/variation?pid=77421020&dwvar_77421020_LSSSize=S
I found this but it's out of stock right now unfortunately.
Great that the youngsters today have the likes of Kelleher, Parrott and Katie McCabe to look up to.
can see the kids jersey online at castore’s website but can’t see the full kit. Not sure if this is too big for him
https://shop.irelandfootball.ie/ie/kids-ireland-home-goalkeeper-jersey-77421020.html
Just wondering does anyone know where I could buy the blue Caoimhin Kellegher kit for an 8 year old for Christmas. I can’t find it. Many thanks in advance
Isn't that what it comes down to? SK was some sort of Pep Guardiola because he came from the League of Ireland. Unfortunately his results show otherwise. It's the LoI you support, not SK.
From what I remember Mick McCarthy 2.0 had one of the best defensive records out of all the groups. Only 5 goals conceded. And most of them were v the Swiss? It was a Very hard Irish team to break down. Scoring goals was the major issue.
.... no, it doesn't!
This thread proves humans will always find a way to argue about shite no matter the circumstances.
I’m glad we won. Imagine how bad the thread would be if we lost.
Yeah Mick definitely would have kept picking the retired Randolph/McGoldrick/Whelan etc. Thank god Kenny was such a visionary to pick from out of the blue Bazunu, O'Shea, Cullen, Ferguson etc. No other manager could possibly have envisioned picking players playing in the Premier League over retired players. Revolutionary.
The desperate straws that are grabbed to try and retcon Kenny's reign are gas.
Mick had us get results in 3 of the four games against the higher seeds in the group and have us one goal short of automatic qualification in the final game.
That's being competitive
I said we’d have beaten Slovakia did I? (I didn’t)
Micks team usually scored. Kenny’s team didn’t for 7 of his first 8 matches. So micks team had a better shot of qualification imo.
we understand each other. We don’t agree. Best of luck to you 👍
And pretending that Mick's reign wasn't that bad, as I have been arguing with people here, is also delusional.
That's the whole f*cking point, yet you're all beside yourselves trying to act like Mick would have done a much better job than SK did.
Mick wouldn't have brought through the players that needed to be brought through at the level SK did. He stuck with what he knew and never deviated, and there was no evidence he was ever going to deviate.
You can accept that SK's reign was awful while also accepting that Ireland was in free-fall long before he ever got the job. However people are desparate to stick the knife in that they're going to pretend otherwise.
Mick achieved nothing in his second spell and there was zero evidence that he was going to achieve anything if he had stayed on.
"One more goal and win would have qualified us."
And yet we never even came close to it. We poxed a draw against Denmark and we were delighted with it. Let's also not forget those 4 goals in 4 games against Georgia and Gibraltar. Exhilarating stuff.
At least now we're winning games and we're not looking like one-trick ponies while doing it.
Mick never looked like winning a game against a team at our level. That is the fact of the matter here. How you can take those results and suggest we then would have beaten Slovakia is mindblowing mental gymnastics.
Micks second term might have been shíte as you say but the evidence he might have done better is that he never reached the absolute levels of diarrhea Kenny did. Naturally you don't want to discuss that.
Going from bad to worse isn't fcukin progress and trying to claim that the bad was somehow worse than the worse is just delusional.
well no…you said “Most people accept that SK's reign didn't work out.” So I queried were those not in the “most people” group under the influence of drugs? I reacted to your own statement.
If you want to discuss the Mick reign - it ended with a one one draw vs Denmark where one more goal and a win would have qualified us. So…pretty acceptable..then Kenny took over and we scored once in the next 8 games.
And if your granny had wheels, she'd be a wagon.
Things under Mick were fairly poor. We didn't score from open play in 180 minutes against Georgia (Pre-Kvartskhelia and pre-Mamardashvili Georgia too) and racked up a staggering 3, including 1 OG and 1 last minute goal, in 180 minutes against the mighty Gibraltar.
Basically, all we had was late hoofing to scam draws when Denmark and Switzerland didn't kill us off. Heimir's taken that approach and done better with it in terms of both performance and results in the past 5 days alone.
What I would say in Mick's favour is he had a lot of pure muck in the team, even towards what Kenny had. He had Randolph, Coleman, John Egan, McGoldrick and the tail end of McClean being a good enough winger. Brady was constantly injured and the rest were very limited. Even Duffy was basically just a big obelisk that you'd hope wouldn't make a mistake at the back and could then stick up top for the last five minutes. And most of the players who came through later under Kenny were either too young when Mick was there or just weren't playing any football. He couldn't really call up anyone else.
He recalled a 34 year old Glenn Whelan and he was one of our better players that campaign. Says a lot.
Things are still a long way from being okay on the player front. I was thinking about it last night, and apart from the first XI last night (and there are question marks about some of them), there's only Knight, Bazunu, Brady, Johnston, Ferguson, and maybe Manning who've generally played okay for us. After that you're into guys who've never really done anything for us and taking a punt on someone like Andrew Moran. And if we do get to the World Cup we're talking about a 26 man squad. We have 17-18 who you could say deserve to be there.
If Coleman gets injured we're in serious trouble, for example. Who the hell do we put at right wing back? Ebosele is a one trick pony who is stumped if he encounters an opponent that can deal with his pace and I never want to see Matt Doherty in an Ireland shirt again. What Sam Curtis doing at St. Johnstone?
What the actual f*ck are you talking about?
You're replying to my post which specifically says the SK reign didn't work out, trying to argue why it didn't work out as if I've said something different.
I'm talking about people in this thread who are arguing that Mick would have done a better job. There is zero evidence to support that, because his second term was so sh*te and he achieved nothing, and he achieved it with a squad that needed to be gutted out quite frankly.
It's impossible to talk to anybody here, because when there is a frank and honest conversation to be had about how sh*te Mick's second term was, it's just a bunch of people saying 'but but Kenny'. Talk to me about Mick, because that's the point I'm arguing.
If you think the spell we had in the doldrums would have been different under any other manager, you're deluded. It's that simple. It's that entitled obnoxious arrogance I was talking about earlier that Ireland should be doing this, that and everything because we are Ireland, and nothing to do with the players available to us at the time.
sorry found the answer
https://www.sportbible.com/football/football-news/fifa-world-cup/ireland-world-cup-hungary-players-banned-play-offs-196962-20251116
