FORMER Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur goalkeeper Carlo Cudicini is a new addition to the Republic of Ireland under 21 backroom staff.
Cudicini was on a recent UEFA B Licence course with the Football Association of Ireland and will help Noel King’s side ahead of Thursday’s game against Andorra in Waterford.
The 41-year-old played with AC Milan, Prato, Castel di Sangro, Chelsea, Tottenham Hotspur, and LA Galaxy Cudicini currently works with the QPR Academy.
“His experience will be a great help to us,” King said about Cudicini’s involvement. “It won’t be just goalkeeping – we’ll include him as we do with all our staff in the preparation. We’ll value his views and hopefully that’ll add strength to us.”
King wants Ireland to make an impact as they commence their qualifying campaign for the 2017 UEFA under 21 Championships in Poland.
“There is always nervousness ahead of competitive games. It’s always completely different to friendly games.
“We’ve Andorra at home and the expectation is to win the game. That’s the expectation, but we have to approach it in the right way to make sure we win the game.
“We had a couple of games against the USA and Russia and previously had the Qatar game plus we used the Germany game which was the last fixture in the previous campaign to look at players for this campaign.
“There has been a lot of changes. We’ve three players in for the first time and have a lot of players with just one cap also. We’ve had a look at players and hopefully that experience in the past 18 months will stand us in good stead on Thursday.”
