INTERNATIONAL football was supposed to be dead. Players reportedly no longer cared. The club game ruled and the international one was viewed as a nuisance.
And then this World Cup started.
Exciting and unpredictable, it has mixed quality with the element of surprise – Costa Rica’s emergence as a genuine force taking everyone by surprise, Mexico, Chile and Colombia proving capable of living with the best. And there was also this bloke from Uruguay called Luis Suarez who bit someone.
While that incident had the potential to overshadow everything else that has gone on in Brazil, the quality of the games has ensured it didn’t. In short, we are probably watching the best World Cup there has ever been although veterans of the 1970 tournament insist it was better.
Amid all this, you wonder and worry about Ireland. As standards rise to another level in South America, on this side of the pond, we are still trying to get our heads around how a team that went into Euro 2012 unbeaten in 14 games could since fall to 71st in the world, marginally ahead of Guam.
Leading into Poland we were on a high. A credible Bosnian side were beaten 1-0 at the Aviva, and in the previous 12 months Ireland had beaten Italy in Liege and drawn with Russia, the Czechs, Croatia and Slovakia.
Since then we have played 29 times, winning just eight games, against Georgia twice, the Faroe Islands twice, Kazakhstan twice, Oman and Poland, drawing 10 and losing 11. And yet we pay more for our management team than 26 of the 32 countries in this World Cup.
Recognising there is a problem within their house, the FAI have employed a roofer to put on a nice façade even though it was labourers who were required to put in the hard graft at foundation level.
It was a point subtly made by Packie Bonner last week in Dublin. Now working on a consultant basis with UEFA, Bonner was formerly the FAI’s technical director and a good one at that. He helped draw up their technical development plan, implementing structures that have resulted in a significant improvement in grass-roots coaching.
But he conceded last week that a sequel to the plan is desperately needed.
“What we put together a decade or so ago was fine for that time,” said Bonner. “But the Emerging Talent programme which was set up got players together just one day a week. That was our starting point way back when we started. But now the number of practice hours have to increase, so young players get more of a chance to develop.
“If we don’t do something like that, how are our young players going to get into the first teams of Premier League clubs? Yes, Irish players will still be signed as potential stars but that does not guarantee they will breakthrough not just at the top level but also in the academies. Our players, like it or lump it, need to get exposure to the Champions League.”
They can’t, though, because the Irish game is intrinsically linked to the English one and Premier League have no interest in doing the FAI or Irish football a favour. And why should they?
For the FAI, though, it is their job to develop the game in Ireland. And right now, they need to accept they are in a crisis, not just because of the mediocre results which have dragged us all down over the last two years but also because of the fear that the next 10 years could be just as bad.
But their questionable policy has been to pay big bucks for a big name – first Trapattoni and then O’Neill. But all they are getting is their name, not a grass-roots revolution, not an investment in Irish-based academies, not an imaginative and risky move to centrally invest in the contracts of promising young Irish players and demand they get to play in a certain style at club level in Ireland.
The reality is that since the old Lansdowne Road was demolished in 2007 and since the Staunton experiment ended horribly, Irish football has been obsessed with two things – the international manager and the Aviva Stadium.
Both have proved to be massive financial drains at a time when we desperately needed a minimum of four elite academies in different parts of the country where highly-paid and talented coaches honed their skills. That too requires huge investment but doesn’t bring with it huge glamour. A top class manager gives you that. And so does a refurbished Aviva Stadium.
But what is the point in having a nice home if you can’t afford to live in it?
