Former Republic of Ireland manager Brian Kerr blames GAA and Hurling for creating Irish football's "mongrel dog" playing sytle.
"Why are they technically better? I think our culture is contaminated by the fact that we have a lot of rugby and a lot of soccer and we've too much Gaelic as well and hurling."
He claims that Irish teams will always struggle to match their European counterparts in the skill stakes because of the the school taught mostly Gaelic and hurling, but not soccer.
"That's had an impact on the style of the game in Ireland and that nobody comes from a culture where it's only and specifically soccer and the influence is we just play it like we should play it."
"We're a bit of a mongrel and we're going through a stage I'd call Netherlands-Lite. We're all playing 4-3-3 at underage and we'll all be members of the non-tackling union in future. It's all nice, nice, nice but jaysus don't put any passion into it."
WHAT DO YOU THINK, GUYS? I'm not posting here to create a fire or any sort of between different Irish sports. But this has to be cleared, that GAA and Hurling shouldn't be blamed for other's fault.
He might be right .
Quote from: ashman on October 23, 2015, 11:05:16 PM
He might be right .
Do you agree? Why do you think so? :)
Manys a GAA head has said the same about soccer.
What a crock of sh1t. Irish soccer produces crap players due to crap coaches. Hurling produce good players due to the efforts of good coaches. If Brian Kerr wants a better soccer team train more coaches and work harder.
I've always found it noteworthy how the League of Ireland began its long death spiral around the time The Ban was abolished. They're not really related - I think it was more Match of the Day that did for the domestic game - but it comes to mind whenever you read someone relaying the apocryphal stories of glass being strewn across soccer pitches in some part of rural Ireland.
i think he has a point, but thats all naturally changing now.
when i was in school you played Gaelic Football or hurling for the school and that was it. in our area there was no soccer team no rugby team. just hurling and football. and if you DID go looking for a soccer club somewhere else you'd have lads looking down their nose in disgust at you!!
nowadays though there is rugby/soccer/cricket/badminton along with hurling and football, and most of those sports are starting kids at U6 and U8 level. none of that when i was younger and its a great thing that there is nowadays.
but if kids are starting to play at a soccer club at age 6 or 7, as a lot are now, it will rule out what Brian is talking about.
not all problems are to be blamed on the GAA mind. proper coaching etc has a lot to play in it too.
It would be interesting to see where Kerr thinks we would be if Gaelic games were not in the frame. Soccer has no significant rivals in England and Scotland, yet you won't ever catch anyone claiming the output of their respective setups can match those on the continent in the oul skills department.
I don't think Kerr is really hitting out at other sports such as football/hurling/rugby.
Ireland is quite unique in that we have multiple field sports all available to most school kids.
Vast majority of European & South American countries really only have soccer as a main field sport. There are obviously some exceptions but numbers wise very few countries do not have soccer as the overwhelming main sport. E.g. England has rugby & soccer, but I'd guess that less than 10% of kids have actually ever played rugby.
The impact on soccer of all these sports is that our "style" is vastly different to most other countries, and we tend to play a much faster, more physical type of game.
A lot of GAA players will play soccer during their off-season (and some rugby lads during their season) and thus they don't really have a major foundation on say passing drills/positioning etc. A lot of them will be quiet good skill wise, but most rely on fitness/physicality. This in turn forces those who solely play soccer to also play more physical so as to be able to compete.
I don't really play a lot of competitive soccer any more but I do play a lot of astro these days, and in the company I work in we have a large number of Spanish/Italian/French/south Americans who I play against now and again. From talking to any of them it is obvious that the way we play is very alien to them. E.g. you will almost always hear some fella roar out that everyone must be marked which will almost certainly have come from a GAA lad playing centre-half.
(P.S. my background is GAA, but I did play a lot of soccer from my late teens onwards).
There is also the question on why British players play so differently to say Spanish/Italian players, and no doubt Irish players play pretty much the same way. That question is harder to explain.
As I've said I don't think Kerr is having a cut at other sports, it is simply that if soccer was by far the main field sport here as it is in most other countries then we would have a much better chance of improving our basic skill/technical levels.
Quote from: ludermor on October 27, 2015, 08:53:42 AM
Why didnt you post the whole article instead of taking certain quotes out of context. It was taken from the Second Captains podcast and they were discussing the technical levels of the Balkans compared to us and he put Gaelic Football , Hurling and Rugby in the same pot to explain the different culture irish kids have playing different sports at a young age and the different aim of the games ( in his view, from soccer being possession based to the others main aim getting to the other end of the pitch as soon as possible)
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Played soccer only in my school and whilst they were the stand out school the style of play was not exactly continental.
Soccer here mimics the English game.
Hurling and soccer are two sports where a huge skill is the first touch. In all cases in soccer and most in hurling the first touch is not with your hands.
I don't know enough about modern soccer coaching and I wonder how is this coached ???
I think the real problem with irish soccer is that it looks to and apes the British game. This is probably understandable due to things like climate , culture and physiques .
an obvious problem is our own FAI league.
€100,000 to the winner of our premier league. while John Delaney gets what? €300,000 a year?! joke.
they need to invest in our own big time.