For those who do get to live the dream, how much harder then must it be to have to let it go and wake up to grim reality, asks Liam Mackey.

Real Madrid will have a really difficult job trying to break Juve down, writes Liam Brady.

For ‘The Third Man’ read ‘The Third Match’ (featuring, um, Harry Liam). So here we are back in Vienna where, this evening, your painfully punning correspondent will be making his third trip to the Ernst-Happel Stadion.

It’s easy to scoff at claims from European stars Dusan Tadic and Robert Lewandowski Ireland are long-ball specialists but the proposition is indisputable according to Uefa’s technical report from the summer European Championships.

Larry Ryan on what we’ll miss most from Gilesy…   

Keiren Westwood’s body language said it all. With 70 minutes played at Turner’s Cross on Tuesday, and David Forde given the nod to replace Shay Given in goal, it looked like the Sheffield Wednesday goalkeeper’s chances of booking passage to France had come and gone without him even donning the gloves.

Friday night marked four years almost to the day since Ireland’s last adieu to their Dublin faithful ahead of a European Championship bid and there were moments aplenty to make you wonder at how much has changed in that snapshot of time.

A football match lasts 90 minutes but the memories can stay with you for a lifetime.

Casting an eye over those battling to be on the plane for the Republic of Ireland’s Euro 2016 adventure...

A night to rival any in Irish history, and a piece of managerial work to rival any in all of the Euro 2016 qualifiers.

If you want to see John Giles roll his eyes, then just mention stats.

There has been a trend developing in football, or soccer, or whatever you call it yourself, whereby multi-million pound players leaving big clubs for other big clubs tweet or Instagram or communicate in some other new-fangled way their gratitude to the fans and the institution they are leaving behind.

Damien Delaney’s international career appears over. 

When Ireland played Scotland in last November’s European Championship Qualifier at Celtic Park, much of the pre-match build-up was dominated by the potential presence of two Scottish-born players, James McCarthy and Aiden McGeady, in Martin O’Neill’s side.

When is a ‘friendly’ not a friendly?

As he contemplates a season in the Championship with newly promoted MK Dons — the club at which he is increasingly forging a coaching role — Keith Andrews insists he is not bitter about the abrupt manner in which his international career with Ireland dried up soon after the Euro 2012 finals.

Euro 2016 Group D

In football, there is an infinite number of reasons why a manager can be asked to pack his bags, but the bottom line when the new man is hired is always the same: do better than the last guy.

The axe swung. Experience counted for nought.

Robbie Keane can still have an impact as a sub but it would be better for Shane Long or Jon Walters to start up front at Celtic Park tonight. Martin O’Neill may be ready to make that big call.

No-one is bigger than the club. It’s a line we hear multiple times every season, even in this post-Bosman era of player power and multi-million pound contracts. It is a line we heard time and again when Roy Keane parted ways with Alex Ferguson and Manchester United back in 2005.

Jonathan Walters has described Tuesday’s dramatic equaliser against Germany as payback for the humiliating 6-1 loss in Dublin two years before.

“It’s Trapattoni with a Derry accent, that’s all it is.”

Robbie Keane is no stranger to headlines, but edging namesake Roy off the back pages yesterday stands up there with the most remarkable of his achievements given he was performing against a side like Gibraltar.

Darron Gibson and Roy Keane both left Old Trafford during Alex Ferguson’s time in charge of Manchester United, but the Derry man doesn’t go along with his Cork counterpart’s description of their old boss as ruthless.

FAI chief executive John Delaney last night insisted the FAI "can be debt-free by 2020" and defended the decision not to allow journalists ask questions about the association’s financial state at its most recent AGM.

FAI chief executive John Delaney has described the success of Dublin’s bid to host games at the Euro 2020 finals as "a holy grail" for Irish football.

It was a perfect finish and gave Martin O’Neill the perfect start, which was all the more important because the performance was far from impressive.

While it would clearly be ridiculous to make any kind of judgement on Martin O’Neill’s management after one game, tomorrow’s fixture in Tbilisi does offer a curious kind of acid test — and an immediate point of comparison.

Seamus Coleman will embark upon the quest for a trip to the Euro 2016 finals desperate to make up for missing out on his country’s last big adventure.

That’s that, then. The last box finally ticked after eight largely forgettable friendlies that yawned across the course of 10 interminable months, in four different countries and against opposition from three continents.

So it’s business as usual, as in business unusual, across the Irish Sea, the fledgling new Premier League season having already sent the back pages into overdrive with LVG’s nightmare start at Old Trafford, Liverpool prepared to swap frying pan for fire as Balotelli replaces Suarez and, simply stinking the whole place out, the Malky Mackay scandal.

Liam Brady has warned that the lack of young football talent coming through from Ireland is "scary".

The difficulty in attracting punters to Lansdowne Road during Giovanni Trapattoni’s final year in charge is reflected by declining turnover in the latest set of accounts for the FAI.

Giovanni Trapattoni has announced he is in talks to become the next Ivory Coast coach.