Ireland doing better than they should

When his back was against the wall scrambling for reasons to insist he was the right man for the job, Giovanni Trapattoni, pointed towards the convoluted rankings table.

Ireland are 28th in Fifa’s most recent list but when you take into account other contributing factors to a country’s success, such as population and economy size, it turns out the Boys in Green punched well above their weight for the last 40 years.

Journalist Simon Kuper and economist Stefan Szymanski teamed up two years ago to publish Soccernomics, a book which essentially used numbers to prove or dispel various theories within the game.