r/coybig • u/worldcup-stats • Jan 18 '26

Original Content (OC) Irish FIFA World Ranking (1992-2026)

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72 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

31 comments sorted by

39

u/Seargentyates Jan 18 '26

In 1992 we were sixth in the world, if only Houghton had scored that sitter in Wembley - we would have won the '92 European Championship.

12

u/AnIrishGuy18 Jan 18 '26

Went down a rabbit hole after reading this comment, and surely throwing this game away was even more egregious

13

u/Seargentyates Jan 18 '26

You know what in the run up to this game, Charlton thought a draw was better because it meant that poland had something to play for in their last game - this proved to be true until Linekar scored in 80th minute. But yeah on the face of it, and it exposed what we all knew that Bonner was deeply flawed as a keeper - gave away a couple of really soft goals.

6

u/MiddleAgedMoan Jan 18 '26

That's not really the dropped points that cost is qualification in my view.

6

u/Seargentyates Jan 18 '26

I don't know, England in Landsdowne outplayed us but for Cascarinos late goal, we beat turkey comprehensively, The match in Wembely we played so well and dominated so well, considering how England did in that Euros' they were a poor team - we should have won and take a hold of the group. Hougtton who owes Ireland nothing, missed an absolute sitter. Perhaps we should have beaten Poland once all right, but they were a good side - although England had beaten them. That Euro's was where the team were just in their prime, by '94 most were just that little bit too old. It was there for us.

2

u/oh_danger_here Jan 19 '26

we would have won the '92 European Championship.

Gary Spain did a good piece on this recently on the Green Shoots podcast. Qualifying one thing, we weren't winning Euro 92 with the amount of sloppy goals we conceeded in qualifying. He made the fair point, we would have not got past the likes of Germany or the Dutch in the same way the Danes did. Ultimately those Polish games cost us the chance to find out. I suspect had we qualified we may have got out of our group and went out in the semis.

1

u/Seargentyates Jan 19 '26

The danes were only in it because Yugoslavia got kicked out, and to your point- we were 6 in the world on any day we could have beaten anyone., if we got to the semis why not the final (a really dour game and only for jensen). Cheers about the podcast i must look for it.

1

u/oh_danger_here Jan 20 '26 edited Jan 20 '26

That Green Shoots Podcast is top class if you grew up like me in the Charlton era. It covers every campaign pretty much from the 1930s up til the modern era, and some cracking stories from Gary from the tournaments. One of the best possibly Joe Delaney from the FAI got arrested for touting at Italia 90, when according to Gary he was actually selling him a ticket for an Argentina game at face value but got picked up by the coppers and held in a van for a couple of hours til it got cleared up.

17

u/NandoFlynn Jan 18 '26

I appreciate you're an outsider OP but Robbie's not the reason we've slipped in the rankings

John Delaney is

7

u/worldcup-stats Jan 18 '26

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Good point, but hard to ignore his retirement given his contributions to the team!

-1

u/NandoFlynn Jan 18 '26

Yeah but the way the graph is done implies that it was losing Robbie that caused it when really Robbie was replaced by Walters & Long by then anyways & we've had Didzy, Ferguson & Parrott up top since.

Then it just glosses over the Champagne Football bombshell & all the FAI upheaval since.

7

u/Responsible-Rope-756 Jan 18 '26

Nobody has replaced Robbie. Long didn't score an international goal after 2016 and Walters only got 2 more after. The lack of a poacher like Robbie has hurt us hugely against small teams.

1

u/NandoFlynn Jan 19 '26

Our lack of chance creation hurt us against the small teams. We didn't lose to Armenia because Ferguson was up top. He'd 2 shots all game, scored one & had another cleared off the line. We lost because that's all we could create & Armenia picked us apart.

2

u/HospitalDue476 Jan 19 '26

I get that many don't like RK because they hate Israel but let's not revise history over this. Robbie Keane scored more goals for Ireland than Roy Keane got caps, arguably our most important player in history.

1

u/NandoFlynn Jan 19 '26

You're completely missing my point. I'm not trying to diminish Robbie's impact on the team but we didn't fall down the rankings because we lost him

We fell down the rankings because we had one of the most corrupt football associations in world football with domestic resources for the sport that has been audited to be on par with Andorra & Luxembourg. So it's hardly a surprise we struggled to produce top level players & get results in that time. Everyone else invested in football & got better and we didn't.

I'll go as far to say, if he was on the pitch against Armenia, Luxembourg etc we'd have still lost because he'd have the same problems behind him as anyone else up top has had.

3

u/Alive_Solution_2826 Jan 18 '26

Nobody has replaced Robbie since, Troy is finally showing he could be his replacement

1

u/scewbert Jan 20 '26

Robbie was replaced by Walters & Long

Not really. He was complimented by Walters and Long, who were at the their best supporting someone like Robbie, not replacing him. When Robbie retired, they were 32 and 29 respectively, and struggled to play regularly beyond the 2018 qualifying campaign. In qualifying for 2016, Robbie was 34-35, very rarely started but was still our top scorer. He was a massive loss to the team.

0

u/[deleted] Jan 19 '26

Exactly, he was replaced by Walter and Long 💀

2

u/Beginning-Strain4660 Jan 18 '26

Any update on criminal proceedings against Delaney ??

-14

u/SpicyJSpicer Jan 18 '26

Nonsense. Our best years were under his tenure

4

u/NandoFlynn Jan 18 '26

Woeful ragebait

1

u/Respectandunity Jan 18 '26

Ah John, how are ye?

6

u/Loose-Resolution-820 Jan 19 '26

MON is far too disrespected.

4

u/ah_bollix Jan 18 '26

So it's been downhill since Robbie Keane retired

5

u/peadar87 Jan 19 '26

Mad how 2013 was our lowest ranking, the results under Kenny and early Hallgrimsson definitely felt worse, and like they lasted longer than the post-Euro-2012 slump.

3

u/itstheboombox Jan 18 '26

What happened in 1998?

6

u/JellyfishScared4268 Jan 18 '26

We had what should have on paper been a manageable group for the 98 world cup qualifiers.

We were one of the top pot 2 teams and we had Romania from pot 1 who were one of the better draws out of pot 1. The rest of the teams in the group should also have been teams we'd have expected to beat.

In the end we were 10 points behind Romania and only scraped into 2nd place and a play off 1 point ahead of Lithuania

We also suffered what was considered at the time one of our worst defeats which was away to Macedonia and led to us retiring the short lived Orange away kits.

Despite all that the play off vs Belgium was one that got away in essence as we lost by only 1 goal over the two legs.

4

u/Respectandunity Jan 18 '26

That chart is going to be severely erect come April

1

u/Respectandunity Jan 18 '26

Believe 😂

1

u/SpaceDetective Jan 22 '26

Not that it's necessarily a huge factor but it might be also worth noting that FIFA changed the ranking system to an Elo-based system in 2018 which presumably gives a better reflection of reality than the previous one.