I am absolutely blown away by the reaction to this video. Thank you all very much for watching, liking and subscribing. Below, there are some really interesting comments that highlight points I may have overlooked or missed in my research. I recommend giving them a read for a more in-depth analysis of this issue. I am a solo documentary maker focusing on Irish and European stories. If you liked this video please feel free to explore my other work on this channel.

I wouldn’t argue with those points, but think there’s a lot more to it. I’d suggest the influx of Irish emigrants to England in the 60s was a factor in our successes in the 80s and 90s. Many of those players were born over there and came up through their system, not the League of Ireland, which wasn’t exactly well supported in the 80s. Better times are a factor in other ways too, kids have more distractions outside sport. Within sport, rugby has gained popularity. The GAA are still a factor of course. On top of all that there’s the influx of players into the English game from outside of the UK and Ireland, both scouted young and bought for outrageous fees. It’s simply harder to make the grade with more competition.

As our football team has gotten worse, our rugby team has gotten better. Kids gravitate towards success. Plus playing rugby professionally means you can also stay in the country and have a successful career. Not every kid wants to emigrate to Burley or Stoke at age 16.

Another factor is the success of the Irish Rugby team. A lot of young people made the switch to play Rugby instead.

Well made video, it deserves more views. As a Macedonian, whose dmestic league is quite poor, I hope that the Irish league gets better and can develop more talent 🇲🇰🤝🇮🇪

Delaney destroyed us but we haven't been smart as a national team. How didn't we get Jack Grealish and Declan Rice capped? You could've given them a few minutes off the bench in competitive games and they'd be locked down permanently. Having one or two top class players can make a huge difference as we saw with Wales having Gareth Bale and Aaron Ramsey. We did this way better in the past when Jack Charlton scoured the secondary divisions for players with recent Irish ancestry and got those players secured. Also, we could have been cute and boosted our world ranking the way Switzerland did. They looked at the rankings, arranged friendlies against beatable teams and treated those matches like competitive fixtures working their way up the rankings table. The higher your FIFA world ranking is, the easier groups you get drawn in.

I'm half-Irish. Every time I go to Ireland, I see all the kids wearing Celtic, Liverpool and Man Utd shirts. I don't think I've ever seen anyone with an Irish club shirt.

a very nice concise video on the timeline, great watch for anyone wanting a quick intro to what went wrong!

Anyone who says the rugby team doing well is causing the football teams decline is actually deluded . It’s not even a factor . As someone who has played football and rugby my whole life, out of the 200 or so I played with in club football , club rugby, school rugby and school football I think I know like 3 people who ever played both sports past u12 levels. Rugbys player base is still the exact same , it’s just that the private schools which they draw most their players from have legitimate professional coaching and set ups so the standard has improved as a result. GAA is the sport that loses talent to rugby not football . As they can get a pro contract while living in Ireland as opposed to not earning any money playing gaa. The gaa player base of country lads and middle class city lads is the same player base that rugby draws from so they are typically in direct competition for players , the town in limerick im from for example half of the rugby team played gaa and vice versa where as the football lads never played rugby and didn’t really play gaa if they took football seriously and played for a big schoolboy football club.

man, i just went through your entire video catalogue and absolutely love it always great to see good content around our little isle, keep up the work. 43 subs will soon be 43k :)

Communities in Ireland of like 500 people have GAA clubs it by far the most common sport and let’s be honest English football doesn’t need Irish players as much as they used to as they can recruit from anywhere in the world, even though I think a lot of Irish lads dream of playing professional football in England the simple fact is a lot don’t make it and end up playing GAA. Rugby thrives due to it bring a private school game but also that rugby requires a different type of athlete compared to football/gaa players. Competition in Europe is tough these days but hopefully the lads can break through into a major tournament 🇮🇪🇮🇪

I always found the juxtaposition of the FAI and the IRFU fascinating. With rugby in Ireland being historically mismanaged particularly in the 90s and early 2000s while football was seeing a lot of success and a flip almost happening around the late 2000s with the sports find of swapping places.

High quality video mate, was a pleasant watch

League of Ireland is getting more and more popular. While the football is league one standard the atmosphere and craic at the games is second to none . English Premiership is overpaid divas watched by the rich and Asian tourists

just found this channel and it's exactly what I've always wanted from an Irish channel talking about Ireland, reminds me of the Dutch youtuber Hoog in a sense

Great summary of our decline Delany has been a large part of it but make no mistake it was not the only factor.

Another major factor was that our last great team (2002 team) was wasted when the Fai appointed Brian Kerr for two seasons, and then Steve Staunton. That was 6 years without a proper decent coach. Wasted a great crop of players.

Thanks for your honesty,Thomas

This was way too well made for a channel with 227 subscribers, you’re going to the top!

Great video mate, I enjoyed that

John Delaney, that's what happened to Irish football.

Great video! I still think that one of the reasons that our football team is so useless is because of the GAA (not that it's necessarily a bad thing). Every rural village in Ireland has a gaelic team, but how many have a football team? If you really want kids to play football then you have to target those that don't have the option. That being said, I wouldn't want gaelic to decline. Maybe there's room for both, who knows.

I think it’s time for the north and south to join forces .

absolutely class video deserves more views

1:33 "They give everything and that's what counts" ... "I'd like to say Hello to my mother"

Look if we had Grealish and Rice in the midfield we would be still doing well and if we had Harry Kane and Jude Billingham, we would win the world cup

Irish people don't generally support the League of Ireland, thus millions of euro crosses the Irish Sea every week and doesn't come back. Until this changes, the national side will struggle to reach its potential. Corporate governance has also been a big problem for the FAI; John Delaney almost single-handedly destroyed the Association. Compare this with the GAA and IRFU, which are well supported and which largely manage to keep the money within the country, and are much better organised than the FAI.

This video is spot on !

As an England fan since 70s l was surprised as how Ireland football had fallen since 2004....They used to be do strong under manager Jack Charlton n players like Houghton, Paul McGarth, Kelvin Sheedy etc etc n e early 2000 Roy Keane...but after that they seem to go down all e way...sad to see this situation for e Irish!!! Hope they can bounce back to Glory soon again!!

Extremely simplistic take

Another factor is when you hire an amature level manager you get amature level football. Scotish or league of Ireland football is not international level of experience required

If you're enjoying this video and finding it informative, please give it a thumbs up👍 And if you want to see more content from this channel, consider becoming a subscriber. I am a new KZfaqr and these little acts of support by you really helps me grow. Thank you for watching!

What about Caoimhin Kelleher? Didn't he win the Prem with Liverpool in 2019/20?

Not suprised , was plenty of talent around country but not scouted by English clubs in areas outside of Dublin .

great video

Back in 2002 it was all soccer everyone wanted to go pro these days we focus on the IRFU

What has happened to us we used to produce talented names such as Roy Keane, Paul Mcgrath, Dennis Erwin, Robbie Keane and Damien Duff now the only good one we have is Ferguson but he is young and cant carry us to a world cup *sigh* before i die i just wanna see us in a world cup tournament im 20 so i have a long way to go so hopefully 🤞 anyways brilliant video on the issues irish football is going through top stuff 👍

Very interesting. As a Scot, I’m always interested in how Ireland are getting on. We have a similar demographic and history, though obviously not identical. I’m old enough to know that football, like everything, is cyclical. I remember Scottish sides being some of the top in Europe, as recently as the 80s. I recall that too for the Dutch, French and Yugoslavian teams. England’s bubble can’t remain forever - it too will burst - and with it, a reliance on Irish, Scottish and Welsh players will return - I’m sure of it. Unfortunately, I find this too really distasteful and subservient. I’d prefer to see all countries thrive. I want to see a more even competition and rising interest in not just Ireland, but Scotland and Wales too. I’d like to see Dutch, Swedish and Belgian clubs given the same. Basically, we need more equality in the game. As Ceferin said, “we need the Rangers and Celtics, the Galatasaraays etc” - he knows it too. This then makes for more competitive national teams, as more citizens see an interesting local pathway, and play the game more. They’re not just fixated on the PL or CL (both of which I find increasingly tedious). I hope Ireland gets back producing great players again. Sometimes, as in our case, that’s not enough, and it needs a great manager too. All the best

Good video with some good points. I’d add massive popularity of GAA in big towns now like Dublin where football dominated before. The lack of emigration from Ireland to the uk- the 80’s & 90’s teams had considerable numbers from the diaspora that went over in the 60’s & 70’s- growing up where football is the dominant sport and going through the English or Scottish club systems, that’s gone since the Celtic tiger and it’s more tenuous now then before- ray houghton, Kevin Killane, Andy Townsend were good servants for Ireland. Despite some other comments I disagree with rugby as a factor as it’s still a middle class sport in Ireland- in the Ireland rugby team if they aren’t from a private school they are likely from the Southern Hemisphere.

Nah, we just had a 5 year period where we weren't embarrassingly poor

I believe a personality like Jack Charlton was still in charge we would have grealish rice etc playing for Ireland 🤔

It's been the same since I was a kid.. I'm from dundalk a council estate in dundalk, no scouts will come look at us wen I was young.. not saying I was good enough to make it, but there was plenty of good footballers in my estate, then my town? Was loads... but we're council estate kids no1 came to scout.. I grew up watching us actually goin toe to toe wit anyone

As a Englishman Ireland does very well supporting and playing 4 major codes of Gaelic Football, Hurling, Rugby Union and Soccer with a small population and compere that to Scotland who have a similar size population yet it's manily Football ( and the Scottish team and crowds are poor apart from the Big Firm) as Rugby is only popular in Edinburgh and the Scottish/Northumberland Borders and Shinty is nowhere near as popular as Hurling....I think you do alright over 40,000 for the FAI final, 50,000 for Leinster v Munster and 80,000 for both All Ireland finals for Football and Hurling.

Good video but it seemed to end without a conclusion I feel

Play station and prosperity. In my era there was no point in going inside. We had one tv channel and it was rubbish. All we lacked was the facilities and coaching. We had lots of very good players in ireland. You must get them playing as much as possible

1:33 He'd like to say hello to his mother.

A good percentage are Celtic supporters as well and the north has alot of rangers and Celtic, alot of celtic an rangers season ticket holders are based in Ireland aswell.

It must burn Ireland so much to know Bellingham is part irish.

In 2002, Rugby & Boxing for example, were amateur sports. Ireland had a few Olympians and no World Champions at anything (apologies to some marathon or distance runners if I'm out by a year or two?). We got entirely behind Jack and he made dreamers better than their dreams. That was one of the best passages in the entire History of our young aggressively passive Nations History. It should not and will not be forgotten EVER. It is this inclusive attitude and basic 'Pride' that will allow us to WIN at every Sport, at every level. Stick with the basics. We are Superb at teamwork.

Jack Charlton nailed the granny rule.

Many factors into the mix but another for me is the current obsession with these what I would call systems over everything type managers. Many of them are like cookie cutter managers coming out with their UEFA licenses. They know all the nice cute drills and passing sequences. They bring it onto the training ground and think they can be the next Pep. They must play short and out of the back etc etc. Its all so one dimensional. If you want to go back to the idea of total football and the great Ajax side of the past, they were a side who could play short, direct, long, pretty, ugly, dirty. The clue was in the name. They could adapt and do what they had to win. It didnt always have to be 5 yard passes side to side. Now we have midfielders who wont spread the first time ball to the wing when a player is free to attack. They will play 3 passes nice and safe to get it to the player and the space is gone by the time it gets there. And we will hear about the fantastic passing stats and ball possession. This is the metrics they currently worship. Overcoaching is killing natural instinct and restricting talent to play the game as they see it in the moment. You still have tactics and structure with this of course but you dont micromanager players down to them being so robotic. I am getting sick of the direction the game is heading in tbh. There is nothing wrong with being real with the group you have in front of you and playing to their strengths. Sometimes that means looking at the group and being good with going direct. It doesnt mean it is caveman football. The beauty of this game is there are so many ways to skin the cat. Its somewhat ironic that the group Big Jack had could have played Kenny's football brilliantly and the group kenny has would be more suited to Big Jacks football. Ireland need to go back to being pragmatic and drop the idealism. Put some fight back into the performances, show the so called fighting spirit that used to be on display. Technically they will be better than us but they wont outwork us.

The players born there also choose to play for England instead of Ireland

The curse of the cult of so called coaching - targeting first gifted midfielder to yield creative autonomy or else! Enter the era of obedient midfield stiffs, expanding ultimately to 11stiffs now.

Oh man, that point about the FAI improving has not aged well

Aldridge etc played for Charlton as much as for Ireland ☘️

A couple of things to set you straight on. (1) The Irish national team is heavily dependent on the English game - that's correct. But it is not to the detriment of the game at home. No, the prize for the abject failure of the game at home goes directly to the people involved in it. If you think differently, just imagine Jack Charlton having only LOI players to work with during his tenure. He would have got us to 2 World Cups and European Championship? Yeah right. (2) John Delaney and the FAI in general can be blamed for a lot, an awful lot to be honest. But despite their shenanigans there was no one ever stopping any coach in Ireland from coaching our kids the correct way. I mean you can go to the poorest countries on the planet and they coach their kids the correct way - technique, technique and more technique. And then tactics. We don't know how to do this in Ireland - simple as. (3) And that brings up coaching. Oh that's right, we don't have any - proper coaches capable of teaching the above to our kids, that is. Where would we be likely to find proper coaches who can teach children the fundamental skills from the earliest age? Try basically any country in South America or Africa where the FAI could have imported the services of youth coaches for next to nothing. (As an aside........why is it left to punter like me on the internet to offer a solution to the coaching problems which beset Irish football?) (4) And finally, for a bit of background, I played at LOI level myself (back in the day). Emigrated to America and learned more about the game in 6 months in America than I did in my whole young life in Ireland. Why? Because I began playing against Italian, Brazilian, Polish, Portuguese teams etc. They had and still have a whole different approach to the game. I would like to think that in the years since I left Ireland, things have changed with Irish football. But it seems there is never any progress towards a team that plays like a functioning team (ie. defends robustly, creates from midfield and finishes opportunities created). And if you think it can't be done, then look at Croatia, look at Chile, look at Belgium and Uruguay. The great Irish creative players and finishers over the years were Brady, Hoolahan, Keane Roy, Givens, Keane Robbie, Stapleton, and, at a stretch, Niall Quinn. Not great is it? So in essence the problem that needs fixing in Irish football is coaching - we need to teach the young kids how to beat a man, how to finish a chance, how to trick defenders with feints etc. But unless we have someone who was actually able to do that in their time, we're wasting our time.

Good video. I’ve been saying that for years and always get shouted down in the pub. If you want your country to do well you have to have a good home league. Stop buying Man U and Liverpool shirts and give your money to your local team. People who complain that Ireland are crap and at the same time support foreign teams are hypocrites. Also the reason rugby and GAA games are more popular is because they are well run. Simple. It’s an attractive entertainment. The football in Ireland story is a sorry tale of the foreign leagues being more attractive and the criminal running of the FAI by Delaney. What a crook.

7:40 Taribo West reincarnated.

Is noone going to mention how truly horroble irish football facilities are. I remember how excited we would get if we got to play against a team with a pretty flat pitch as most of the pitches we played on were horrible, basically farmland. In rugby, clubs have showers and clubhouses, in soccer you're lucky if they have the back of a trailer for you to change in

Multi culturalism in england finished off the Irish at pretty much everything. The big clubs in the premier league wouldn't look at the good irish players anymore, much easier to sign players from other countries. Same with the building sites im England, the look to eastern europe, asia and africa to find employees, ireland gets ignored

John Delaney…. A ‘where is he now’ video would be useful.

Also, other nations who were better than have passed us out after 20 years of investment whilst we sat back. Hungary, Austria, Albania, and Greece are teams we would always have been confident of beating. Those same countries now have much better teams than we have.

The main issue is the domestic league is still semi-professional at best. If young kids want to make it, they either have to leave Ireland or hope to get scouted by an overseas club.

The players got worse and worse😢

The English football league traditionally consisted of footballers from the all over the British isles and the Commonwealth, mainly Caribbean and African players. It was not only football, but in other sports ie rugby, cricket, athletics, tennis, Olympians etc. A northern Irishman captained the first British team , Tottenham Hotspur, to win the league and cup double. And off course the greatest footballer in the world came from Belfast. George Best even the great Brazilian Pele said so. He also said, ‘ thank God to the British, they bring the beautiful game to Brazil. It all changed off course when Sky launched the premier league, we had players come from Europe and the rest of the globe. The premier league is now globally by over a billion people. The football in the irish republic didn’t develop for political reasons. It was purely down to extremist groups and their politics.

1990 squad? Probably ranked 4th or 5th in the world

Caomhin Kelleher won the premier league in 2019/20 with Liverpool

Look on the bright side at least they got a draw against New Zealand 😅

You ignore the fact playing for england instead of ireland has huge funancial gain these days. International football is 2nd to club football these days.

correct me if im wrong but it feels like your missing something when talking about the history of Irish football without mentioning celtic, like in the more recent stuff i understand but what about further back in history?

Irish fans travel to Anfield every week and don't support their local teams, then they wonder why their national team is shite 😂

The irish dont really care about football gaelic games and rugby is much bigger

Acquiring talent via "The Granny Rule" only went so far....the LOI was indispensable as well and the Premier League owes them a sizeable debt....Roy Keane being the most obvious one but also John Giles, Liam Brady, Tony Dunne, Paul McGrath, David O'Leary, Kevin Moran, Frank Stapleton, Ronnie Whelan and of course our new interim manager John O'Shea....some of the best players to ever grace their pitches, we gave them on a silver platter.....John Delaney let LOI atrophy over the 20 years he was in charge...causing it to lose that core function of developing dangerous players that go on to ply their trade in the neighbour's garden and when they're called up for international duty, they're locked and loaded because they have the experience of playing both with or against many of their opponents in the World Cup and the Euros....

It's the "curse" of the small football nations that is responsible about the downfall of the Irish national team. Ireland is just having a "bad breed" of footballers. Small countries (in population), are keen on football quality fluctations, because the pool from which they have to pick their players is limited. Ireland is a country of 5 million people. A bad breed can result in very poor results in international level. But Ireland is lucky... Most small nations (population

The primary focus should be on Futsal or 5 a side football. How many times have 11 a side underage teams struggled to make a team on the weekend before a match outside of Dublin? In Futsal each player will get more touches and is involved in every play, thereby developing quicker. In 11 a side, especially underage, you may only get about 2 seconds of actual ball time, not to mention the poor goalkeeper. There are proven systems in countries with similar populations - Croatia, Belgium and Iceland. ZERO attempt to learn from them or acquire their expertise has been made. BTW the FAI are the same group of cronies since Delaney's time, just extended cronies but there's links between all of them. Disgusting organisation that is using tax payer's money.

The Republic of Ireland look like they’re about to go through a golden generation hopefully with Ferguson up front but Mark Travers is a legend 🇮🇪

Underage managers out for their own glory instead of being up players for senior team, they would happily fill under 18/21 teams with players who have absolutely zero interest in playing for the senior team

It’s all down to the fans. If the fans put their money. into the Domestic game instead of throwing at foreign English teams then it would be a completely different situation. Millions upon Millions is brought over or spent by Irish fans on English teams every year. It’s sad

Soccer just isn't well supported. Almost every GAA club in the country has their own ground and is the heart of every community.

Ireland have always been dreadful at Football when they appoint a Republic of Ireland born coach. Stephen Kenny was way out of his depth and was clueless at how to coach the players to score goals. He had zero creative goalscoring ideas. All the 4 non Irish born coaches have got the Republic to a major finals. Jack Charlton, Mick McCarthy, Giovanni Trappatoni and Martin O'Neill. Go outside the Republic to bring in an outside coach because home born managers are of a very poor Standard when it comes to CREATIVE FORWARD COACHING.

Irish football's biggest problem is its own football league. Just look at those countries that don't have a competitive football league like Estonia or Moldova. Irish football remains in the European League B because there are the English who have the Irish grandfather and those few talented pure Irishmen play in the premier league.

LOI and FAI had ample opportunity to market and fund the game here, but couple that with the reign of John Delaney means we are where we are and probably decades from having a proper competitive team again. The Argentine FA was on the verge of bankruptcy as well and nobody wanted the job around 2018 until it was thrown at Scaloni. But look at the constant conveyer belt of talent coming through?! Kids from impoverished backgrounds hungry to succeed. It’s far more nuanced and highly complex but JD well and truly fucked football in this country along with poor governance, funding and management across the board from grassroots up. But the one country Ireland could definitely devise a case study on is Uruguay. Their Baby Futbol program is the reason why they churn out world class talent almost every year as the grassroots level of football in that country is highly professional and funded properly. A country with a smaller population than us, and doesn’t necessarily have other sports, if any, picking up talent. We are without a doubt probably still relying on some old crusty Guinness farts Padjo with a file-o-fax and dusty fax machine waiting for leads instead of building up contacts outside these isles. Facts. P.S. I’d love to see the Irish team like the Slovenian one - virtually the whole squad dotted throughout Europe instead of us lobbing all the eggs in one basket and hoping for a team in the lower leagues in England. Unfortunately because of cultural ties and language most kids are off to England whereas jaunts further afield would without a doubt improve a child’s development just the same if not even more in the UK [albeit more and more kids are going to continental Europe in the last decade].

Ancelotti has played a role in the decline of Irish football.

I would never called Ireland football giants, never

When john delaney was head of the fai he pumped no money into our league nor our youth development system across the island and pocketed it all and they lack getting big mangers to manage because of this need to wipe the whole fai and build a panel from the core of the system in my opinion

Ireland are not bad at all, one of the few European countries to reach a world cup 1/4 final...

The Saipan affair poisoned the well. When the "feel good" factor was taken out of the equation the Ireland set up became a less attractive entity to be around (both for fans and prospective players). Ireland could go into a future world cup as bookies favorites to win and I don't still think the Irish public would even care as much as they did back in the Charlton/McCarthy years, because there is now a disconnect between the public and the players.

The premier League happened that was the real reason

i think because there is less irish players in the premier league the loi attendance we continue to rise

Player's in our heyday would role up their sleeves and get stuck in. Not now! These players are pure dross and not good enough to wear the shirt...The FAI are still lining their own pockets as recent events have shown... The League of Ireland is growing year on year, no thanks to the FAI... National TV seems to have caught on, but alas they give pittance to the Clubs for broadcasting their games. I'll go watch the Drogs and leave the FAI to sort out the mess they continue to Can kick down the road!!?

Rugby is where its at in Ireland. The FAI needs to look to Irish rugby as an inspiration

Don't forget the Fai took the money UEFA where paying Dundalk.

I'd like to day hello to my mother 😂

kenny in

This video dosent explain the lack of success pre Jack Charlton.. but sort of does post Jack Charlton .. but the three real answers to Irish success was Jack Charlton, Jack Charlton and Jack Charlton.

Most young play GAA.

Delany and the fai under his leadership was a complete shower of basterds. Back when dundalk was having a golden era. He fai would retain the clubs european money for months on end to make the books look good. They had the club rip up the recently installed pitch that was to european standards and replace it with one they deemed allowed. Knowing if the town made it back to europe again theyd have no option but to play the matches at the aviva. And retain the majority of ticket revenue for themselves. Money that would be pocket change to them but to the club it would have been a hell of an investment. (I know oriel parks away end isnt fit to hold 5 people never mind european fans) the FAI have always been against none dublin based clubs.

Were they ever a good football team in the first place? Their so called " golden generation " under Jack Charlton only ever managed a first round appearance in Euro 88, a quater final in 1990 without even winning a game and a second round in 1994...says a few things.

We finally got a manager that wanted Ireland to play football but didn't have the players to make it work.We'll soon be back to the drudgery of long balls. What really needs to happen is that we need to forget about trying to qualify for tournaments for a few years and put all our focus on player development. We can't rely on the grandfather rule or British academies anymore. We need to be investing in grass roots football, having centres of excellence with quality professional coaches at under age level and ensuring that every professional club has a functioning academy. I say all this knowing that the media will never allow enough time for such a long term project to come to fruition and even if they did, we don't have the money to do it.

Pigs will fly when Ireland win a cup