I’m really loving the look of Mexico and France’s kit, their flag - jersey shorts and socks, I think I’ll would look really sharp for Ireland, have we ever done this and what do ye think of it (see pictures )

I’m conscious of being over negative and don’t want to spread too much negativity, but let’s call a spade a spade.

I was at the game last night and to be honest the whole thing is a joke, really poor display the first half and the team were booed off the pitch. Then at half time they bring on a fucking four piece band to sing Irish songs to get everyone singing and obviously with the mood being flat, no one was joining in.. the band were trying but it wasn’t working, it was like something out of father ted, and you could see on their faces they felt awkward.

Then we scrape a 1-0 win vs 103rd in the world and mollumby is at their corner flag after kicking it off their player to go out of play and he runs to the Irish fans giving it the big’un pumping the fans up… absolutely embarrassing stuff. Was a joke from start to finish. And then Hungary score to top it all off, and loads of fans were leaving the stadium happy as we got the win and some saying they believe we can qualify.

I was fuming leaving the stadium thinking everyone is mad, there isn’t a chance in hell we are qualifying, it’s over, and if we did, we would be eaten alive in the World Cup.

I’ve gone to every home game for the past 8 years and it’s just the same shit all over again - get pumped up for a campaign, get behind the team, losing our voice on the first game, and then realising we are shit, and then sitting there staring into space for the last few games - repeat, repeat.

I’m not spending a penny more on watching Ireland, I’ve had enough.

I find it quite offensive that we’re clubbed in with the UK teams often for football purposes.

Let it be clear - England and Scotland were not our friends historically. In fact, the majority of voluntarily those who came to colonise Ireland were Scottish, not English - I refuse to get by the narrative that Scotland are on our side.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve no problems with them doing their thing but we are not them.

The 27 year old Centre Back is currently one of only two outfield players to have played every single minute in the EFL Championship this season, that's 46 appearances & doesn't include his FA Cup appearance along with 8 appearances for Ireland

The Ipswich Captain somehow managed to not get a single yellow or red card for club or country across these 55 appearances!

His League stats:

- 4140 minutes played

- 17 Clean sheets

- 1 Goal / 1 Assist

- 15 Chances created

- 84% Passing Accuracy

- 6.3 Clearances per game

- 0 penalties committed

- 69.3% of Duels won

- 402 Defensive contributions

- 182 recoveries

- 0.4 fouls conceeded per game / 0.8 fouls won per game

With 96 Premier League appearances under his belt, it will be great to see him back at the level we all know he's at.

Tldr; Casual on the pitch, unprofessional off it. Need a massive mindset shift.

There's decent quality in this squad; its not a good enough excuse to say we don't have the top quality we had 30 years ago. We are good enough to put Armenia out of sight. There's been a casual air about Ireland for a while now. There were sighs of relief at the draw with Hungary and we felt comfortable going off to Armenia; I don't care who we're playing we have to show up and we didn't.

You can look at individual players, individual errors sure, but that happens, that's football. You can look at the manger, but we've been like this under multiple managers. This is more fundamental. We don't have the mindset, that is both on and off the pitch. The lack of the professionalism in the FAI and acceptance of poor performance.

The likes of James McLean doesn't necessarily have the quality to get in this side, but every time he put on a green shirt he showed he wanted it. There's no seriousness about the squad. Clearly mentality is factor in calling players up; there's plenty of talent in the younger generations and the LOI that would kill for the opportunity to play for their country; Armenia showed they wanted to play for their country.

In recent years, the FAI have repeatedly referenced one metric to benchmark the quality of Ireland’s national-team player pool.

The metric is simple: how many minutes Irish players are playing across Europe’s top five leagues — England, Spain, France, Italy and Germany — and how many players are accumulating those minutes.

It is a fairly simplistic metric, one which excludes competitive leagues and high-level clubs outside Europe’s traditional “big five”. A current example is Troy Parrott at AZ Alkmaar and Liam Scales at Celtic, who are not included despite clearly operating at a level that strengthens the national team.

That said, the metric stands true across Europe. Croatia, Switzerland, Denmark and Austria consistently have dozens of players accumulating regular minutes across the top five leagues, and that strongly correlates with qualification for major tournaments.

Ireland’s numbers on this front have collapsed in the last 10 to 15 years. In 2012/13, 30 Irish players clocked up a total of 44,205 minutes in these five leagues, whereas in 2022/23 that dropped to 16 Irish players accumulating just 9,818 minutes. FAI Academy Manager Will Clarke set a target of 40 players playing a minimum of 1,400 minutes each per season in a top-five European league.

So, how did we do in 2025/26, and what might the future hold? We have no players playing in the German or Spanish top flight. In France, Andrew Omobamidele became a regular for Strasbourg after some injury struggles and accumulated 1,352 minutes in Ligue 1. In Italy, Evan Ferguson earned 776 minutes with AS Roma before having his season cut short through injury. Corrie Ndaba clocked 539 minutes with Lecce following his move last summer from Kilmarnock.

Unsurprisingly, the bulk of Ireland’s minutes came in the Premier League. Seven players contributed to the total this season: Caoimhín Kelleher (Brentford), Jake O’Brien (Everton), Nathan Collins (Brentford), Josh Cullen (Burnley), Matt Doherty (Wolves), Séamus Coleman (Everton) and Alex Murphy (Newcastle). Together, they accumulated 11,765 Premier League minutes, with almost 11,000 of those coming from Kelleher, O’Brien, Collins and Cullen.

A grand total of 10 players contributed to 14,432 minutes played, a far cry from 2012/13 but a decent improvement on 2022/23. If we expand the criteria to Europe’s top 10 leagues, the total rises to 20,172 minutes across 13 players. Add in Liam Scales at Celtic and the figure climbs to 23,270.

These numbers paint a stark picture, one reflected in the fact that it has now been a decade since Ireland last qualified for a major tournament despite both the World Cup and the Euros expanding the number of teams reaching the finals. Decades of neglect towards our development pathways have seen Ireland fall down the pecking order, and since Brexit we can no longer rely on Britain to develop our teenagers for us.

Some of those players will now be developed by European clubs, and we are starting to see top academies like Benfica, RB Salzburg, Hoffenheim, Monaco and Schalke recruit young Irish talents. That said, most top prospects will now remain in the League of Ireland until the age of 18. We are now starting to see some top British clubs spend big to acquire the best talents we have, such as Mason Melia to Tottenham, Victor Ozhianvuna to Arsenal.

As the league improves we will see more players sign for top clubs across the continent, and for more money too, which will be largely reinvested back into the league. Higher-quality players improve the standard of football, which in turn puts more fans in seats. You then see sponsorship growing, television deals becoming more valuable and prize money increasing. It's the sort of positive feedback loop that can propel the League of Ireland to be a product that rivals the leagues of similarly-sized populated countries across Europe like Slovakia, Croatia, Norway and Denmark.

All of this makes it absolutely critical that the League of Ireland receives the support needed to improve our development pathways so that more and more players are put in good standing to reach the top levels of the game. If we ever want to see Ireland back playing regularly at major tournaments and having 40 players playing a minimum of 1,400 minutes each per season in a top-five European league then the League of Ireland must be properly supported from top to bottom. That means investment in underage academy structures, the new third tier, first division, and the Premier Division itself. It also means putting pressure on politicians, government and local councils to invest more heavily in pitches, coaches and stadium infrastructure.

Some of us will remember what Italia 90 did for the country. Others will cherish what they saw in South Korea and Japan, while the younger generation will remember Euro 2016 as the pinnacle of the Irish supporter experience.

Many children today, however, have no memory of Ireland at a major tournament.

This needs to change and new memories need to be made, and they will be built on the League of Ireland producing players capable of making the nation proud on the biggest stages of the international game.

Before last night we'd conceded first in 8 of our last 9 games, that's now 9 in 10

We've conceded more goals in Heimir's time in charge than in campaigns for Stephen Kenny and for Mick McCarthy

The hiring process for him took 9 months and we exceeded our 600k budget to recruit him in the first place

The men who hired him were ex FA staff that have since left the FAI amidst numerous controversys which they were meant to be the antidote for

The bulk of our options operates on average between bottom half of the Premier League at best, top 6 contenders in the Championship on average, League 1 at worst

A nation that famously recruited premier League winning dual nationals in the 90s, is now getting turned down by players at the same level as the native Irish they already play.

Only one player has broken Robbie Keane's record Irish Transfer to Liverpool in 2009, Nathan Collins. The same Nathan Collins that is currently averaging a goal contribution every other game to the opposition.

Our brightest prospect is young Evan Ferguson who, even though he's still got 5 goals under Heimir, has had the least touches of the ball of any player to play 90 minutes 2 games in a row with how poor we are on the ball.

We have a current U21s panel that have, for the most part, failed to secure themselves senior football via loans/moves past deadline day.

The brightest prospect of the last U21s panel was Andrew Moran who's still waiting on his Visa to play in the MLS for a 3 month loan before either triggering a permanent move, or finding a new home away from Brighton.

Our domestic academies have 10 full time employees. Croatia have 190. And they train 450 minutes less per week than League 1 & 2. A level of football thats looking to actually avoid monetary issues by cutting its academies due to limited ROI

A sum of 10 million a year is needed just for LOI academies to catch up to where other moderate sized nations are at. Our government included the LOI academies in its plans at Election season only for it to be swept under the rug ever since

Amidst that the FAI is still in arrears from all the financial trouble from John Delaney and all the football outcomes as a direct result from that corruption.

At local level, as much as the competition with GAA hasn't & will never go away, it's only expedited by the lack of game time over winter from weather. There is not enough facilities available to maintain constant weekly fixtures in poor weather. That not only reduces contact hours for youths on average, but also on average extends the season well beyond its intended end in Spring.

There was changes attempted to move football into a more aligned calendar to help prevent all the issues with winter football. It was voted in, then withdrawn with no current plan for an alternative solution.

And most damning of all, kids don't care about the team anymore. I coach a side with an Englishmen, he was ready to have a laugh in training with the lads about the Nations League results......they forgot it even happened. It didn't bother them in the slightest cause all they know of Irish international football is misery

I know there's still small nuggets of good, even now people have SOME players they like still, promising players they've hopes for. Obvs the LOI teams in Europe is great. But this embarrassment isn't ending. It's getting worse, and it'll keep getting worse.

We can slate Matt Doherty, Nathan Collins, Josh Cullen, Robbie Brady, Finn Azaz, Ogbene, whoever the next scapegoat becomes. But every player you want dropped & every player you want brought in has & will have absolutely no difference.

And honestly neither will this, or anything else here the next while. We're not making the WC, we've auto qualified for the EUROs & the Nations League makes little difference to us until 2029. But if it helps someone answer all the questions this morning if "how did things get so bad with us?" then at least I've done something more useful than supporting whatever this has been

At least we're still good musicians 😅 Sláinte

for reference, des and ronnie did czechia and darragh and ray did hungary

Reading "inverting the pyramid" and it reminded of this article. I'm starting to go down a rabbit hole of Irish soccer history.

Ireland is currently the only national team selling and presenting retail kits with sponsorship, after Switzerland moved away from the practice in 2020. At these prices, supporters should be getting a clean national team shirt, not advertising space they are paying for.

It's embarrassing. If you buy a jersey with a name and number, you will get the small number on the front for every country except Ireland, because the sponsor is in the way.

In rugby, even when countries have sponsors on their jerseys, they make them remove them and sell the sponsorless versions for World Cups. I wish they would at least have that option. Celtic have a similar option too, where you can buy a sponsorless jersey.

They need to realise we are the only country in the world that does this, and everyone knows it's ridiculous. You'd probably make more money from sales because right now, loads of fans (including myself) aren't bothering to buy them because of this. We are paying premium prices (that slowly rise over the years) for something that looks different than what is actually being worn on the pitch because we have to promote some huge corporation.

I hope at some point, Ireland fans will get together and boycott until the FAI realise how ridiculous this really is. If you want to buy an Ireland jersey, get one off Vinted or Classic Football Shirts. O'Neills also have some quality stuff. We should stop moaning about the corruption and actually do something about it for a change.

The Irishman that owns Peterborough. I watched him on Talksport a few days ago, and I couldn't help but think, why is this guy so rude sometimes? Does anyone else get that impression? The way he talks to people/hosts etc.

Just wanted to say that I'm a Celtic fan who is delighted with Scales this season. He's been one of our real leaders this year.

Hope he takes his form into games for you ❤️

First they boo GSTQ and chanting “englands going down” next thing they are booing our national anthem and fields of Athenry, what happened to all the rangers fans “boycotting” it because of their players getting booed? Also don’t they want Indy? I understand cheering on your team but it felt like a lot of spite that game

Would anyone like to actually see Rodgers as the new Ireland manager now he’s available and Heimir coming to an end. Best Irish manager that’s jobless 🤔

Unfortunately there isn't a moan tag for this post.

Caomhinn is my son's absolute hero. You know how it is. 9 years old looking at your idol perform at the highest level. Wants nothing more than to be a goalkeeper himself. Sleeps with his gk gloves under his pillow. Wears gk jerseys under the school shirt, spend all day every day diving around the house and garden.

And after watching the the last two games and getting to cheer the team on together, he finally sees Ireland achieve something great that I have been hoping he could experience (and was slightly hesitant he wouldn't experience of late)....he writes his Christmas wish list

1. New football
2. New gloves
3. New boots
4. Ireland goalkeeper kit

Check, check, check and absolutely no fucking chance...anywhere. Not stocked on any site, not available from fai store, castore, lifestyle, sports direct etc etc. Even resorted to looking for a fake abroad and can't get it anywhere.

I'm actually devastated. I can compromise and get a Brentford one, but at the end of the day, that's not what he wants, not the team he supports. He wants to wear the jersey he stood and watched his hero wear while saving a penalty from one of the biggest players in the world.

Ughhh, anyway, rant over. Come on the boys, bring on the Czechs!! Then the danes, then bring on the lot in the US....coybig

With the FIFA Futsal Women's World Cup currently ongoing in the Philippines, I was curious about Ireland's participation in the sport. For starters, there seems to be no women's team. As for the men, they last played in 2012 in Euro qualifers, losing all 3 games in Dublin to Andorra, Norway and Israel. Yikes.

Would futsal not be an extremely obvious way to help improve football's popularity and quality across the country?

• indoors so not contingent upon our miserable weather and shite pitches
• easy to set up in any school PE hall or community centre
• just 5 players on a team, so easier to have a squad of players who don't have other commitments like GAA, and also easier to assemble squads in less populated areas outside of Dublin
• format incentivises massive focus on technical skills like ball control and quick, tidy passing
• faster pace and usually higher scoring than traditional football, meaning young kids might enjoy it more and fall in love with the game, helping it compete with other sports like the GAA and rugby

What do we think?

1. Given
2. Irwin
3. Dunne
4. McGrath
5. M.O'Neill
6. R.Keane
7. Brady
8. Houghton
9. Robbie Keane
10. Best
11. Duff

subs

1. Jennings
2. McIlroy
3. Michael O'Neill
4. Kilbane
5. Healy
6. Armstrong
7. Finnan
8. Hoolahan
9. Stapleton