Second Captains Part II

"Roy Keane for the lols" - Didn't Ken actually suggest that a few weeks back? albeit tongue in cheek no doubt

Yeah, like Tuchel for instance 😁

They have a replacement they like, they just can’t afford him and anyone they can afford is not acceptable to fans or their head coach idea.

man utd, for instance, have loads of money but keep spending it in the worst ways imaginable. That’s embarrassing. Allegedly Ireland’s football association doesn’t have the money to afford the manager they want. Maybe that’s embarrassing to some but it isn’t to me. Whats embarrassing is that Ireland didn’t produce a single player of real quality for at least a decade until recently. What’s embarrassing is that there is not football economy in Ireland, no properly funded academy structure, terrible football infrastructure, what’s embarrassing is our place in the UEFA club coefficient, pretending that Declan rice is Irish, essentially that there is no money in Irish domestic football.

if you want to talk about embarrassing; that’s embarrassing.

I don’t understand anything close to feeling embarrassed because we might not have a manager for some March friendlies. I think it’s people like you experiencing a type of Stockholm syndrome because a load of journalists have created a feeding frenzy that we have to have news everyday on the progress of finding a new man or it’s a “farce”

Your first mistake was assuming the vast majority of people who follow the national team have any interest in the sport in the country beyond that team. GAA, rugby and the EPL leave everything else in the soccer landscape here well down the order of priority. It’s questionable if it even deserves the grant money it does get at this point, let alone the types of funding we’ve heard the Second Captains campaign for.

What the majority want is a national team that doesn’t get ran ragged by Luxembourg and can be a bit of an escape a few nights a year, this isn’t actually that deep. They don’t care if the facilities in the LoI are crap, if John Delaney is having cocaine cowboy parties or if Tony Cascarino/Declan Rice are playing for us, if they’re being brutally honest.

That is the reality that people like Ken, Dion and Branno are always going to be fighting against. We are not really a nation of soccer purists and we never have been.

Wow. Some load of nonsense that.

What a load of nonsense.

The job isn't too appealing.

I think there's some truth in some of what Tucker Tim had to say, even if I wouldn't have put it so bluntly myself.

Beyond the national team and the PL a lot of people don't care really deeply about the state of underage football, or the LOI, or the facilities, or whatever. That's not to say there aren't plenty of people who do. But you could also say the same about people's attitude to any sport in the country. Plenty of people don't care about GAA beyond the county team, or rugby beyond big Ireland matches.

But I dunno if anyone is really out there claiming we're a nation of "soccer purists" either. Haven't heard that from anyone in a long long while.

Personally, I don't really care that it's taking a bit longer than expected to find a new manager - at the end of the day, in the grand scheme of things how important is that really - but because the media needs to talk about something it's getting pored over and discussed at length.

Unless I'm missing something, why was the CEO of the organisation getting personally involved in something as trivial and low level as annual leave for a junior staff member?

Surely someone in his position would have a team of people under him to deal with hr and annual leave related queries, leaving him free to actually run the FAI as per his position. I find it bizarre that he was involved in such an exchange. The email about him jokingly trying to get paid unused holidays himself really stuck out because I wouldn't expect a man in his position to have anything at all to do with that.

I've never even met the CEO of my company as they are too busy running the place!

I thought one of the worst parts was he still lives in England. Can't we find someone living in Ireland to do the job?

If anything you could make a strong argument for the opposite, seen as how most players play in England so makes sense for the manager to be there.

And likely playing gaelic football or hurling at a higher level than whatever they’re doing in soccer anyways. By the time you’re 15 and if you’re showing any athleticism you’re making your county team’s underage panel. It’s that early that’s things really get serious with preparation.

LoI heads like Branno like to pretend that soccer players aren’t well served but except for a few rare examples they are all multi-sport at those ages regardless. Any development plan needs to account for the fact 16 year old Jimmy isn’t spending noon and night at his local soccer club even if they have space age facilities everywhere.

The GAA and rugby need to show value for money too but when it comes to Irish soccer it seems to usually devolve into pointing at the other crowd and whining about how much money they get without also acknowledging the development work those sports are doing for the exact same demographics that are playing underage soccer.

To be fair there's been no suggestion that the manager should live in Ireland -- part of the remit was that they would HAVE A BASE in Ireland, not BE BASED in Ireland. Very different things. The expectation is just that they would come over more often, as part of the role as it is now seen involves working more with developing the academy structures, rather than only dealing with the management of the first team (hence why Carsley is the top candidate). They would still likely live in England, and be in England for the vast majority of their time, but would come and work on the ground with the football development folks occasionally too.

It is a ludicrous argument, thankfully no one actually made it.

Edit: Just listening to this week’s episode where Branno is throwing his toys out of the pram because of the Casement funding and he, with a straight face, said Pearse Stadium is a great ground. I’m sorry but him and Murph haven’t a clue what they’re talking about with regards infrastructure, I’m from Connacht so I’m very well acquainted with Salthill and Pearse is a sight of a stadium built in literally the least accessible location in the city. It’s so close to the Atlantic coast that I genuinely have been to all of two games at Pearse that haven’t been ruined by wind alone. It was a physical power play to move the historic home of Galway GAA from Tuam, which even in its still shambling state is a much more enjoyable venue to watch football. Trying to get to and get out of Mannix Road is genuinely a mind-bending experience and I can’t get over that they think it is fit for any sort of dual purpose.

If the GAA chose to build their stadium in the wrong place that's real tough isn't it. It's not a problem the taxpayer should be troubled with.