Finding green shoots in a dark age for Irish football

At a time when the FAI is in the dock, former Cork City player Derek Coughlan argues that the important work which has been done to develop our young football talent deserves to be acknowledged

The figures which have been bandied about regarding John Delaney’s salary and expenses are especially hard to stomach when it would take at least 15 League of Ireland players on an average professional salary and the sum total of our Premier and First division winners’ prize fund, before the scales would start to balance.

Delaney is a polarising character who ships criticism in abundance but is also quietly appreciated by a large section of the Irish soccer community. Personally, my biggest gripe with the FAI concerns the neglect of our national league. It’s maddening that the powers that be can’t see that, in promoting the game in this country, such a vital piece of the jigsaw puzzle is missing.

But while it’s obvious that a major transformation is needed in how football is governed in Ireland, we ought not to lose sight of the great leaps being made in the game on these shores. We were late to the party with our coaching and player development programme but, in 2013, Ruud Dokter was the man given the job of overhauling our underage system, and the first 14-year-old players under the Dutchman’s tutelage from six years ago are now reaching the nurturing hands of Stephen Kenny as manager of the U21 team.

After many years of hard work and devotion to a belief in how the game should be played, the green shoots from that appointment are starting to appear. And that harvest time is on the horizon, evidenced by that fact that we are now at a point where it’s possible to list off plenty of young names who have a legitimate chance of making a big impact in the game.

This is down to the coaches who have been given the backing to become elite authorities on how to develop young talent. Our young stars have been expertly educated along the way by people like Colin O’Brien, Tom Mohan, Paul Osam and Jim Crawford. Every age group is being taught a consistent football etiquette while learning the necessary life skills to navigate the often murky waters of the professional game.The culmination of this vision is that we have exciting, confident and fearless players entering the equation for our senior team (not to mention a couple for the English team!).

Amid all the negative headlines around the FAI, it would have been easy to overlooked the trojan achievements of the young boys in green in recent weeks. Tom Mohan’s side easily qualified for the U19 European championships in Russia in July while Stephen Kenny’s U21 team showed fantastic swagger and produced joyful football to see off Luxembourg with a 3-0 win in their opening European Championships qualifier.

In front of almost 5,000 appreciative fans in Tallaght Stadium, the positive, unified atmosphere in Kenny’s squad was epitomised by the sight of Adam Idah jumping into his new manager’s arms after his second goal of the night.

And we have good reason to hope there is more where he came from: as hosts of the 2019 tournament, our U17s will competing in the Euros finals for the third year in a row next month. In 2017 and 2018, Ireland reached the quarter-finals, before narrow defeats to England and the Netherlands.

I believe that hindsight will show the appointments of Mick McCarthy and Stephen Kenny as concurrent Irish managers to be a masterstroke. Mick affords Stephen the right amount of time to put his stamp on Ireland’s approach to international football and it looks like the U21 boss has taken to his new role like a fish to water. His delight in overseeing his side’s first competitive outing was palpable.

Praising a product of the John Delaney era at the FAI might not be what people want to hear during such controversial times but — my concerns about the League of Ireland notwithstanding — I have to say that I feel very positive about the underlying direction in which Irish football is heading.

And with a new CEO set to take over the reins, let’s hope we get a candidate who strives to provide the best possible domestic league for our young guns to prosper in before some of them move onto big English and European clubs.

Meanwhile, that our seedlings are blossoming is down to the hard work and determination of the staff in Abbottstown and the footsoldiers implementing their message the length and breadth of the country. It’s easy to throw the baby out with the bathwater and, while huge changes are needed in how things are done in the organisation, it’s important that we acknowledge and support the positive developments.

If our young starlets continue on the path they’re on, it won’t be long till the fans are walking around the streets of Ireland with names like Idah, Parrott, Kelleher, Molumby, Farrugia, Ronan, Obafemi and Bazunu on the back of their jerseys.