Where the streets have household names

In a global football landscape increasingly studded with state-of-the-art academies, you don’t hear too much talk about street football anymore. But even though Jack Byrne has already been through the Manchester City development system, when the 23-year-old Shamrock Rovers star enthuses about his formative days in the Dublin north inner-city patch which has also given us Curtis Fleming, Wes Hoolahan, Graham Burke, and Troy Parrott, it can sound like a bygone era.

“Must be something in the water there,” he smiles. “I don’t know, there are good people in the community, good people who want kids to do well. Where I grew up, we’d just play in the flats on concrete. You’d have to keep the ball down — kick the ball over the fence, and it was going straight in the Tolka. Keep the ball on the deck and try and play.