WE USUALLY RESERVE our bouts of lamenting introspection for the aftermath of international matches, but looking ahead to tomorrow’s game against Greece is also a way of looking back at ourselves.
It is a classically tight group game: the third seeds away to the fourth seeds in conditions slightly advantageous to the side ranked slightly lower in Fifa’s world rankings. It is, in other words, the kind of game that both sides’ supporters expect they can win.
But is this really a game we should expect Ireland to win? Should we ever expect Ireland to win a game away to a group’s fourth seeds?
If you see Irish football solely through the prism of the senior international team then the answer is probably yes. If you were to judge Stephen Kenny by his optimistic oratory, then his bold visions should extend to win away to a fourth seed in the fourth year. And skipping back to before Kenny’s time, when Martin O’Neill was the fourth-best paid manager in Europe and his assistant was better paid than all but six of them, then wins away to the sides ranked lower than Ireland were a pretty basic KPI.
And when the FAI was under its now-deposed leader, they were governed by an expectation that Ireland should be winning these games. It’s why so much money was paid to a succession of high-profile, silver-haired managers: the volatile lode to be struck at European Championships was their most reliable source of trickle-down income.
The expectation that Ireland will win in Greece ignores how difficult Ireland have traditionally found these games. There have been 10 qualifying campaigns since Ireland played at the 2002 World Cup, in two of which we were the fourth seeds (qualifying for the 2006 and 2014 World Cup.) In the other eight campaigns, Ireland have beaten the fourth seed away from home three times, and only once have they beaten them home and away.
Expectation should be tempered further – if not eliminated entirely – when you take a wider view and start looking at what the FAI have not done rather than what they have.
This is not to denigrate the current set of players and the manager. Kenny and his staff have devised enough canny game-plans at this point to suggest Ireland will have the right approach in Athens, and the Irish players are ultimately good enough to beat Greece. But that we have the staff and players to deliver a win over Greece is a near-miracle in and of itself, as for decades the FAI have pursued the strategic direction of a penniless minnow.
As most of Europe built from the bottom up, the FAI tried to do it from the top down. So as the senior men’s team was hosed with money, the grassroots of the game was choked. The stark reality was laid out by the FAI’s own infrastructure report last week. 3% of grassroots clubs have more than one changing room per full-size pitch. 23% of clubs have no showers in their changing rooms. 31% of clubs are so pressed for space they have had to find a second location from which to work. 80% of clubs say funding is their largest obstacle to developing these facilities, but 282 of these clubs are renting their grounds on leases with less than 15 years left to run and so aren’t even eligible to apply for a sports capital grant. In a competitive environment against sports with far better facilities, how can Irish football be expected to retain all of its best and brightest?
Youth academies have also been hopelessly neglected. Ireland’s top professional clubs average between zero and one full-time coach in their academies, whereas Greece have between five and seven, which is the average across all of Europe. Only Luxembourg, Andorra, and Northern Ireland are ranked as low as us on this table.
These cold realities are reflective of a wider lack of government commitment to sport in general. Per figures from 2018 in the FAI’s infrastructure report, the Irish State has spent 0.4% of its annual GDP on sports investments, which places us second-from-bottom on the EU table. Greece have spent 0.8% of GDP on sport, which is again the broader EU average.
Given we have effectively rigged the game against ourselves, it’s remarkable the Irish squad is as good as it is. That is thanks to the work of a loose confederation of fantastic coaches ranging from grassroots to first-team LOI level, all underpinned by innumerable volunteers working in ramshackle facilities and without the wider dignity ascribed to their generosity that is enjoyed by those giving up their time for the GAA.
It is also a warm reflection of dedicated families and above all the players themselves, who have shown the talent and the bravery to forge their way in a callous, cut-throat professional sport.
Those currently running the FAI appeared to have grasped the reality that the previous strategy for the game was arseways. But if the FAI can deliver on their broad and expensive plan, it should breed excitement: if the Irish senior men’s team can be this competitive in spite of itself, how good might it be if the team was a product of a coherent and adequately-funded environment?
Given the chronic under-funding and the dysfunctional governance that has afflicted football in Ireland for decades, anyone taking a holistic view then asked to zoom in on tomorrow’s game in Athens would conclude, who are we to expect anything?