FAI...New Manager Hunt continues

[seafoid]

McClean is like a stalwart on a GAA team who never won anything and then is surpassed by the victorious under 16s from 8 years ago who win all before them including the county final. A higher state of football.
But I am not sure we have those young fellas in the BIG.

[imtommygunn]

If these technically gifted players put in half the shift of James McClean over what must be ten years now, we'd be alot better off.  At a time when players cry off for the smallest of things mcclean appears, plays through injuries etc.  A great servant to Irish football

Absolutely. His commitment cannot be faulted. But at 32 his ability can.

It could have been questioned earlier too.

While he is a limited player and sometimes can be a red card waiting to happen I have been to many many games at the Aviva and he definitely showed a lot more drive than a significant number of players and fully deserved to be there(most of the time) because of that. More ability and significantly less enthusiasm loses every time.

[The Wedger]

Rocco Vata looks like a great talent. I vaguely remember his father and will always associate him with a very bad era for Celtic.
Will Rocco stay or go?

https://punditarena.com/football/andrewdempsey/rocco-vata-ireland-under17-celtic/

[Milltown Row2]

Watch the Jack Charlton show the other day, was a very emotional documentary.

In fairness to Jack he got results, the tactics were simple and the results followed.

The republic team would take that now!

[imtommygunn]

It's a tough watch in parts but brings back some memories too.

[Milltown Row2]

It's a tough watch in parts but brings back some memories too.

I was at the airport, well the closest we got was a mile up the road in the car, it was left on the hard shoulder, got to see the team bus go by, at a snails pace, crazy trip down too

[seafoid]

Portugal will tell a tale.

[J70]

Good article in The Athletic on the state of the Irish team, what Kenny is trying to do, and the damage done by Delaney.

https://theathletic.com/2943232/2021/11/11/the-fall-of-the-republic-of-ireland-and-the-reason-theres-now-hope-again/

[Cavan19]

Good article in The Athletic on the state of the Irish team, what Kenny is trying to do, and the damage done by Delaney.

https://theathletic.com/2943232/2021/11/11/the-fall-of-the-republic-of-ireland-and-the-reason-theres-now-hope-again/

Can you copy and paste the article into here?

[J70]

The fall of the Republic of Ireland and the reason there's now hope again

Daniel Taylor and Michael Walker

The Azadi hotel, Tehran. Gold statues in the lobby. Marble columns, ornamental vases filled with huge lilies. Five restaurants, each with a view of the Alborz mountains. It was five-star luxury, the Iranian way.

But on that particular day in November 2001, it had been a rough night for the visitors from the Republic of Ireland. Mick McCarthy and his players were struggling with the change in altitude, 4,000 feet above sea level.

The traffic was bedlam. The ballroom where McCarthy was holding his press conference was hot and airless and it quickly became clear the representatives of Tehran's 16 daily newspapers suspected Roy Keane was going to pop up, abracadabra-style, and reveal he was not injured, after all.

The following day, Iran were playing Ireland in the second leg of a play-off to reach the 2002 World Cup. Every question seemed to come back to Keane. It often did in those days, and also for quite some time after he had departed the scene.

Robbie Keane had agreed to answer some questions and some of the Iranian journalists seemed confused by his surname. They genuinely seemed to think it was Roy.

"Mr Keane, you are famous among Iranian young people, you are a hero to Iranian youth. You are strong, of course, you are like Hercules..."

Robbie entered into the spirit of things. "Jaysus. I haven't his muscles. Am I a bit of a Mister Macho Man? I don't know. No, seriously it's nice if that's the case."

One of the journalists had his hand raised for what seemed an age and McCarthy pointed him out. It was the final question. Fill your boots, son. Make it a good one.

"Mister McCarthy, is it the Republic of Ireland or the Republic of Roy Keane?"

Even through everyone's nervous laughter, it was possible to hear McCarthy's sigh.

It is 20 years next week and however much Irish football would dearly love to say it has moved on, or at least is trying to move on, the question still lingers.

Roy is no longer there — even if, in another sense, his presence is still felt. Robbie, Ireland's all-time leading scorer, has also gone. Others, too. One by one, Ireland has lost its A-listers. Seven of the nation's top 10 appearance-makers have left the scene in the last decade. And the new era requires patience and understanding.

In happier times, when Ireland could trouble even the most accomplished opponents, the street-sellers on Lansdowne Road laid out flags and scarves and T-shirts showing the name of "Keano" and many of the other players who wore that famous green shirt with distinction. Shay Given, Damien Duff, Kevin Kilbane, Niall Quinn, Jason McAteer. Robbie, of course.

Now it tends to be just "Ireland" emblazoned across the merchandise rather than individual names. The latest squad has only eight players from the Premier League. Almost half the players are at Championship clubs and four of the forwards are attached to League One teams. Ireland has always cherished its football heroes, it just isn't so easy to know who the present-day heroes are.

"Put simply, Irish players are no longer relevant at the top of English football, usually playing for unglamorous clubs in unglamorous places," says Kevin O'Neill, author of the 2017 book Where Have All the Irish Gone?. "They know Oxford and Oldham but not Old Trafford, and they know the way to Accrington, not Anfield."

The last time the Aviva Stadium switched on its floodlights was for a game last month against Qatar that was optimistically described as a World Cup "preparation match".

Optimistic because Ireland were next to bottom of a qualifying group and, realistically, gave up any hope of reaching the World Cup after losing 1-0 at home to a Luxembourg side now in 94th position in FIFA's world rankings, just behind Bahrain and Lebanon.

Tony Cascarino talked about it being the worst Ireland side for 40 years. Damian Delaney, another former Republic of Ireland international, summed it up neatly. "We're playing Luxembourg! My god, we should compete better against Luxembourg."

Ireland might be preparing for a World Cup, just not the one in 2022. "It's getting harder to get to the World Cup, and it's getting easier to get to the Euros," Brian Kerr, the former Ireland manager, tells The Athletic. "Can we get back to the stage where we're thinking about finishing first or second in a qualifying group? We look a bit short."

Qatar were obliging opponents, though, for a team whose next assignment comes tonight against Portugal and Cristiano Ronaldo. Ireland's own CR7 — Callum Robinson — scored a hat-trick. Shane Duffy headed in the other goal and, if anything, it was a surprise Ireland did not add more. Final score: Ireland 4-0 Qatar. It was a sunrise of a smile on the face of manager Stephen Kenny, hugging his coaches, waving to the crowd.

The crowd seemed to like what they saw, too. They sang Kenny's name. There was a loud cheer whenever Jimmy "The Bell" Finnerty, who has been ringing his bell at Ireland games, home and away, since the 1970s, gave everyone a ding-a-ling. It was Ireland's second win in four days and, to put that into context, it had taken them nearly two years to register their previous two victories, against Andorra a few months ago and New Zealand in November 2019.

Tickets for the Portugal game sold out in a few minutes. "It has been a long, long time since that happened," says Ger Keville of You Boys in Green, an Ireland fans' forum. "A lot of people said Ronaldo was the reason. We firmly believe the Kenny factor is the major draw. People are excited by what Kenny is doing. That's the main reason."

That positivity might seem strange to outsiders when this is not, on the face of it, a particularly exciting era for what was once ranked the sixth-best football nation in the world. Kenny has been in the job since McCarthy's second spell in charge came to an end 17 months ago. Kenny did not win any of his first 10 games and any manager with that record will polarise opinion.

"The campaign to get rid of Stephen Kenny has been up and running for a very long time," Eamon Dunphy, the renowned Irish commentator, said last month. "There are some notable names supporting it. I see the project as him rebuilding Irish soccer from scratch. And doing work that others didn't do."

Dunphy is a useful ally. Others seem less inclined to believe in the brave new world. Richard Dunne is among the former players to question whether Kenny's contract ought to be renewed. The Luxembourg defeat tested everyone's faith.

"That was his low point," says Matt Holland, the former Ireland international. "Since then, there has been gradual improvement. But it's fair to say, when he first came in, the results weren't good. You were looking at what he was trying to do and thinking, 'Hmm, I'm not sure you've got the players to do what you're asking them to do'. All of a sudden, it's starting to take shape. But it has taken time. If we were having this conversation five or six games ago, there would have been a lot of question marks."

Since that Luxembourg defeat, Ireland have lost one game out of eight, turning down the volume on Kenny's critics. The momentum feels real. And, in the process, Kenny is trying to get away from the stereotype of Irish football. He does not make it mandatory to have a big man up front, in the manner of Quinn or Cascarino. It is not all about flying into tackles and outrunning opponents.

"It's possession-based with the aim of getting into good attacking positions, good control of the ball, bodies up the pitch," says Daryl Horgan, the Ireland striker. "Every team he's ever had has been expansive — flying full-backs, a striker scoring goals, players looking to get on the ball. That's what he wants, players to be brave and create havoc."

Horgan probably understands this better than anyone, bearing in mind he has worked with Kenny for longer than any player in the Ireland squad. His career began at Sligo Rovers in the League of Ireland and took him to Dundalk, managed by Kenny. Horgan won three consecutive titles with Dundalk and played for Kenny's team in Europe before signing for Preston North End in 2017. He is now at Wycombe Wanderers and, at 29, one of the older players in an Ireland squad where the emphasis is keeping the ball and playing out from the back.

"Don't get me wrong, he's pragmatic as well," he says. "We've gone to places in Europe (with Dundalk), been under the cosh and had to sit deep. It's not all airy-fairy 'we're going to play beautiful football and lose four-nil'. That doesn't happen."

A post on Twitter went viral after the Qatar win. Four years ago, it said, Martin O'Neill's Ireland passed the ball 79 times in the first half against Georgia. The modern team put together 38 passes in the build-up to Robinson's third goal against Qatar.

This is Irish football, the Kenny way.

"He's changing the brand of football," says Horgan. "He's bringing in a lot of young players — he's given 14 debuts — and some of these players, they're kids! They're 19, 20, I'm looking at them thinking they're going to be brilliant. There's a lot of very talented young players. When these players hit their peak at 26, 27, they'll have a ridiculous number of caps and experience. I'm sure that will be seen in our results."

The opening passage of Champagne Football, the warts-and-all book about the scandal-hit Football Association of Ireland, probably tells us a lot about how John Delaney ran the organisation as his personal fiefdom.

The scene was the Mount Juliet golf club in rural Kilkenny. October 2017.

It was Delaney's 50th birthday and, true to form, no expense was spared to make sure the great and the good of Irish football were reminded about his love for the good life.

Emma English, his fiancee, had arranged a previous birthday party with a teddy-bear theme because, as she told a television audience during a joint appearance on The Saturday Night Show, Delaney was her "teddy bear".

For his 50th, however, there was a James Bond theme. Bursts of flames from a pyrotechnic display greeted guests. There was a huge ice sculpture of a Walther PPK pistol, Bond's weapon of choice, surrounded by the spy's favourite martini cocktail glasses. The waiters dressed like villains from Live and Let Die. Cardboard cutouts showed Delaney's head superimposed above an Ireland shirt with "JD" on the captain's armband. The iconic Bond 007 logo had been changed to "John Delaney 0050" on posters.

Among the guests singing "happy birthday" and admiring a huge cake, styled like the Aviva Stadium, was Aleksander Ceferin, the UEFA president, as well as various other dignitaries from European football's governing body. Martin O'Neill, then the Ireland manager, was there. Sir Alex Ferguson had sent one of the video messages. Brendan O'Carroll, the star of Mrs Brown's Boys, introduced Delaney from the stage.

"For many football people in the crowd, the extravagance of the party made them laugh in bemusement," wrote Champagne Football's co-authors, Mark Tighe and Paul Rowan. "Some assumed Delaney, with his €360,000 salary, must be picking up the tab. Others weren't sure."

In total, the FAI ended up spending more than €80,000 on the party, including €26,293 to the venue, €25,000 to the party planner, €7,595 for chauffeurs and €3,609 for a fleet of helicopters that never got off the ground because it was too windy.

When Delaney made a payment to the FAI to cover the bill it was for a nice round number: €50,000. And the missing €30,000 or so? That was footed by the organisation that ran Irish football and that, on Delaney's watch, was already straying dangerously close to being financially shipwrecked.

The name's Delaney, John Delaney.

He is a disgraced figure now in football circles. Delaney had run the FAI into the ground over 15 years. He resigned as chief executive amid a series of revelations about the culture of excess he had created. The FAI required a bail-out from the Irish taxpayer and there was never going to be a quick fix for that kind of mismanagement. The FAI's current debts are around €65 million.

Add in the financial hit caused by COVID-19 and there are obvious challenges for the new-look association as it puts together its FAI Strategy for 2022-2025, having spent much of the last year on a consultation process around the country.

"The process, I believe, is pretty unique in our history in terms of the breadth and depth of people within our Irish football world who we will meet, listen to and engage with," says Jonathan Hill, the FAI's chief executive. "We are now embarking on a series of roadshows that will allow us to consider and debate what really matters for the future."

One of the focuses will be to improve the standards of grassroots football. Another will be to create better pathways for young players and also to develop the women's game. Plus there is a new emphasis on improving the League of Ireland — the competition Delaney described in 2014 as a "difficult child" — in a country where, pre-pandemic, more than 200,000 people used to board flights every year to watch Premier League fixtures.

The football landscape is changing in other ways. Brexit means that Ireland's up-and-coming footballers cannot join English clubs until the age of 18.

When Ireland's under-17s played Andorra recently there was not a single player signed up to an English club. The transfer of 16-year-old Kevin Zefi from Shamrock Rovers to Inter Milan is a sign about how things might progress. For the most part, however, the best young footballers in Ireland now have to pin their hopes on the youth development structure in their own country. Except, of course, that structure is nowhere near as sophisticated as the one in England.

Noel King, the former Ireland under-21 manager, has said that any Irish youngster who wants to succeed in the Premier League has to prove he is worth about £30 million.

Is it any wonder, therefore, that Kevin O'Neill's book describes England as a "land of broken dreams" for so many young Irish footballers?

"Nowadays, a young player might be the best in Dublin, or Cork, or Waterford," says the author. "They might be a certainty for the various under-age international sides and they might be idolised locally, from an early age, for possessing superior skills to their peers. But when they get to England, it's a whole new world.

"Regularly, they lack the physical prowess and technical skill of their new colleagues. This owes itself, primarily, to a lack of exposure to organised and efficient ways of training in Ireland. So, as soon as an Irish player arrives in England, they are playing catch-up. And what's more, they are not merely competing with the best young players from England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Far from it: they are up against players from every corner of the globe."

On that basis, how long before Ireland produces another Liam Brady, John Giles, Roy Keane or Paul McGrath?

Graham Barrett, the former Ireland international striker, answers that one — and what he says is a reminder about the scale of the task facing the FAI in the post-Delaney years.

"Put simply, we have stagnated while the football world has moved on. Our structures are outdated and have been failing us for a long time. We stood back and watched as other countries professionalised themselves in how they developed players from an earlier age and invested in facilities. As measures were implemented elsewhere to increase the numbers of properly qualified coaches, we did next to nothing."

Twenty years ago this week, Kerr was preparing to board the plane to Iran. He was the FAI's technical director at the time and the head of the youth teams that had produced some of the travelling squad.

Ireland lost 1-0 in front of a 120,000 crowd at the Azadi Stadium but went through on aggregate because of a 2-0 win in the first leg. There was euphoria and, on the team's flight home, a party so raucous that the pilot felt it necessary to tilt the plane to persuade everyone to return to their seats.

The players did the conga down the aisles. They helped drain the bar. They went through the full songbook — The Pogues, U2, all the classics — and Matt Holland gave everyone a rousing solo of Fields of Athenry before the plane touched down in Dublin just after 4am, to be greeted by hundreds of fans.

It was the last time Ireland qualified for a World Cup.

"I remember the game and the scenario," says Kerr. "At that time, we had players near the top of the Premier League such as Roy, Denis Irwin and John O'Shea at Manchester United, Steve Finnan at Liverpool, the Spurs players. Shay Given was at Newcastle. A very solid group of Premier League players."

Kerr, however, is old enough to recall other times when the Irish presence at England's top clubs could be sparse.

"It wasn't really until Jack Charlton's era that we got that regular flow," Kerr says. "I remember games in the 1960s and 1970s when we didn't have many of those players. We had Johnny Giles at Leeds, but the Arsenal team of Liam Brady, David O'Leary and Frank Stapleton, or Paul McGrath and Kevin Moran at Manchester United, came later. And in the Charlton times, it became acceptable to take players in from the diaspora, like Ray Houghton and John Aldridge. When we did have players in the top six clubs, it wasn't because of a system. It was because of the culture here and the character of individuals."

For a younger generation of football fans, it might seem strange to be told that nearly three-quarters of Charlton's squad (16 out of 22) for the 1990 World Cup in Italy were born in Britain and that the joke of the time was that FAI must stand for "Find Another Irishman".

The story, for example, of Charlton going to a match at Oxford to ask Aldridge, a Liverpudlian, if he would accept a call-up and finding out in the process that Houghton's father was from Donegal. A year after scoring the winner against England in the 1988 European Championship, Houghton admitted he still did not feel "the slightest bit Irish".

Kevin Sheedy went as far as alerting the Welsh football authorities that Ireland wanted to call him up — so would Wales like to get there first? The offer wasn't taken up, so Sheedy devoted himself to Ireland.

Or how about the story of Maidstone-born Andy Townsend cheering on England against Ireland in 1988 and then playing for Ireland against England in the World Cup two years later?

These days, however, it is increasingly difficult for Ireland to capitalise so easily on what used to be known as the "granny rule". The scouting networks of other countries are too smart, too clued-up. The English FA has an entire department to prevent losing out this way and, as Ireland discovered with Jack Grealish and Declan Rice, that can lead to considerable disappointment.

But there are other ways to be clever. When Chiedozie Ogbene, who moved from Nigeria with his family as a child, made his debut as an 89th-minute substitute against Hungary in June, the Rotherham United winger became the first Africa-born player to win an Ireland cap. Ireland's demographic is changing and, with immigration, new opportunities are coming up.

"When I was technical director I said we should encourage this, that we would have a different mix, that we might have fewer freckly red-heads," says Kerr.  "We are seeing that now with boys of west African and eastern European extraction coming through. That's a very good thing."

Kerr had two years as manager after Roy Keane's walk-out from the World Cup led, ultimately, to McCarthy losing his popularity and then his job. And by the time Giovanni Trapattoni had been appointed in 2008, the drop in quality was increasingly becoming clear.

"Trapattoni began to dip into the Championship," says Kerr. "He still had the likes of Robbie Keane and Damien Duff and Shay Given. But we no longer had as many players at teams in the top six in England. It wasn't necessarily about the ability of Irish players. The world had got smaller in terms of recruitment. Players were coming into England from Africa and South America. It meant fewer places for Irish players.

"Seamus Coleman at Everton was, and probably still is, our highest-ranked player. Matt Doherty is at a high-profile team in Spurs but hasn't been playing.

"When Ireland beat Italy at Euro 2016 and played well against France, I remember thinking we had some good ball-players like Robbie Brady. But it hasn't turned out like that. I don't think Martin or Mick had a great pool to work with. Hence the frustration with results — playing on the counter-attack, nil-nils, James McClean battling on the wing."

This had become Ireland's identity. There were highs such as Shane Long's wonder-goal to beat Germany in qualification for Euro 2016 but O'Neill had to field teams with Daryl Murphy as a latter-day Cascarino and then came the low of the 5-1 home defeat by Denmark in the 2018 World Cup play-off. The Danish midfielder Thomas Delaney called the Irish style of play "primitive".

This, in short, is what Kenny is trying to change.

"The biggest problem Ireland have had over the last few seasons is scoring goals," says Holland. "Unfortunately, Robbie Keanes don't grow on trees. Before Robbie, the top scorer in Ireland's history was Niall Quinn, with 21. And, in the absence of James McClean, there's nobody in double figures. Maybe Callum Robinson can kick on from here."

It certainly speaks volumes that after McClean (11 goals), West Bromwich Albion's Robinson is the joint-leading scorer in the squad, with six goals. The other player on that number is Duffy, a centre-half.

"Where are we now?" Kerr asks. "I think there's been a fairly substantial turnaround. It was necessary because the team was full of players over 27, 28. There were no emerging players and Stephen has addressed that. The question is: are they good enough to win matches at international level?

"My view would be that it (the change) has been too drastic. But little emerged over 10 years, few coming in at the under-23 bracket. There was a big drop-off and why was that? Some of it is because it's harder to break through, English clubs are fussier in recruitment, the financial crash in 2008 here and the reduction in investment by the FAI, the whole structure... then League of Ireland clubs took over development.

"We've always depended on the English clubs to develop our players, now it's on clubs here and they don't have the facilities or the coaches. There is some great work being done and one of the advantages is that players are breaking into the League of Ireland first-teams at 17, but there is no one going from St Patrick's Athletic to Manchester United like Paul McGrath. Players are going into the Championship and not higher."

An hour or so before Ireland's last home game, a group of journalists in the press box were looking through Ireland's squad to work out how many players had "gone upwards", career-wise, in the last year. The answer was one: Nathan Collins, who had moved from Stoke City to Burnley.

They also noted rather wistfully how few journalists from the English newspapers bothered to fly over these days to cover the games. A small thing, perhaps, but another sign of Ireland's diminished status. At some point, this proud football nation lost its star names and, with that, its wider appeal.

It is not always easy either to talk about a new start when the Luxembourg defeat, only eight months ago, was not the kind of ordeal that can easily be forgotten.

"Look, it's a tough, tough result," Horgan says. "This is not the Luxembourg of old. If anyone watched the game, they're a decent side. We didn't play as well as we should have and people look at the result and go, 'f**k, one-nil to Luxembourg, Jesus. Terrible performance'. But it's never as black and white as that."

Horgan was on the bench as Luxembourg, a nation measuring 51 miles in length, won with an 85th-minute goal. He was also among Ireland's substitutes in Portugal in September when the team were winning 1-0 only for Ronaldo to score two late headers.

"Two moments of brilliance," Horgan says. "I was up this morning and my little man was watching highlights of that game. The headers were so good. But our play was extremely good. Aaron Connolly could have had a penalty, we were very unfortunate. As a team performance, it was one of the best under the manager."

He sounds positive. Is Euro 2024 a reasonable target? "Absolutely."

Keville, from You Boys in Green, can also detect a growing sense of optimism from Ireland's supporters and, more than that, an understanding of what is realistic and what is not.

"It's a long time since I felt such positivity and energy in the crowd as it was in September when we drew 1-1 with Serbia. You could sense the fans were right behind this project. Then we beat Azerbaijan away. Let's keep a bit grounded here, it's Azerbaijan. But it was the manner we dealt with them — previous Ireland teams didn't win like that.

"The players played with glowing smiles, as they did against Qatar. The shackles are off. The young lads are pushing the more experienced lads and the buzz on the pitch is mirrored in the stands.

"Richard Dunne wrote in one column that "we always beat teams like Azerbaijan". But Dunne was in a team stacked with Premier League players — title-winners with Damien Duff and John O'Shea and a Champions League winner in Steve Finnan — that lost 5-2 to Cyprus. When you are building something from scratch, and from the remnants of a disgraced CEO who bankrupted the association, it is going to take time."

Realistically, that might mean a few more bumps on the road ahead but, if nothing else, Kenny seems determined to improve the new wave of players and make it attractive for the fans to watch.

"We have players with potential and it's bottomed out in terms of losing games and scrapping to arrange a friendly with Andorra (rather than more glamorous opponents)," says Kerr. "It's developing. The team's changing from the kick-and-rush image Stephen says we had. But they're not Robbie Keane, they're not Stephen McPhail or Damien Duff. There's a lot of fringe players finding their way."

[Captain Obvious]

A young lad dressed in Irish colours on RTÉ news outside Lansdowne road asked what does he want to see tonight? a win for Portugal and I'd like to see Ronaldo score his answer.

[laoislad]

Doherty with a knee into Ronaldos back, good man more of that please.

[Milltown Row2]

Doing well, 7/1 is a good price at the minute

[seafoid]

The fall of the Republic of Ireland and the reason there's now hope again

Daniel Taylor and Michael Walker

The Azadi hotel, Tehran. Gold statues in the lobby. Marble columns, ornamental vases filled with huge lilies. Five restaurants, each with a view of the Alborz mountains. It was five-star luxury, the Iranian way.

But on that particular day in November 2001, it had been a rough night for the visitors from the Republic of Ireland. Mick McCarthy and his players were struggling with the change in altitude, 4,000 feet above sea level.

The traffic was bedlam. The ballroom where McCarthy was holding his press conference was hot and airless and it quickly became clear the representatives of Tehran's 16 daily newspapers suspected Roy Keane was going to pop up, abracadabra-style, and reveal he was not injured, after all.

The following day, Iran were playing Ireland in the second leg of a play-off to reach the 2002 World Cup. Every question seemed to come back to Keane. It often did in those days, and also for quite some time after he had departed the scene.

Robbie Keane had agreed to answer some questions and some of the Iranian journalists seemed confused by his surname. They genuinely seemed to think it was Roy.

"Mr Keane, you are famous among Iranian young people, you are a hero to Iranian youth. You are strong, of course, you are like Hercules..."

Robbie entered into the spirit of things. "Jaysus. I haven't his muscles. Am I a bit of a Mister Macho Man? I don't know. No, seriously it's nice if that's the case."

One of the journalists had his hand raised for what seemed an age and McCarthy pointed him out. It was the final question. Fill your boots, son. Make it a good one.

"Mister McCarthy, is it the Republic of Ireland or the Republic of Roy Keane?"

Even through everyone's nervous laughter, it was possible to hear McCarthy's sigh.

It is 20 years next week and however much Irish football would dearly love to say it has moved on, or at least is trying to move on, the question still lingers.

Roy is no longer there — even if, in another sense, his presence is still felt. Robbie, Ireland's all-time leading scorer, has also gone. Others, too. One by one, Ireland has lost its A-listers. Seven of the nation's top 10 appearance-makers have left the scene in the last decade. And the new era requires patience and understanding.

In happier times, when Ireland could trouble even the most accomplished opponents, the street-sellers on Lansdowne Road laid out flags and scarves and T-shirts showing the name of "Keano" and many of the other players who wore that famous green shirt with distinction. Shay Given, Damien Duff, Kevin Kilbane, Niall Quinn, Jason McAteer. Robbie, of course.

Now it tends to be just "Ireland" emblazoned across the merchandise rather than individual names. The latest squad has only eight players from the Premier League. Almost half the players are at Championship clubs and four of the forwards are attached to League One teams. Ireland has always cherished its football heroes, it just isn't so easy to know who the present-day heroes are.

"Put simply, Irish players are no longer relevant at the top of English football, usually playing for unglamorous clubs in unglamorous places," says Kevin O'Neill, author of the 2017 book Where Have All the Irish Gone?. "They know Oxford and Oldham but not Old Trafford, and they know the way to Accrington, not Anfield."

The last time the Aviva Stadium switched on its floodlights was for a game last month against Qatar that was optimistically described as a World Cup "preparation match".

Optimistic because Ireland were next to bottom of a qualifying group and, realistically, gave up any hope of reaching the World Cup after losing 1-0 at home to a Luxembourg side now in 94th position in FIFA's world rankings, just behind Bahrain and Lebanon.

Tony Cascarino talked about it being the worst Ireland side for 40 years. Damian Delaney, another former Republic of Ireland international, summed it up neatly. "We're playing Luxembourg! My god, we should compete better against Luxembourg."

Ireland might be preparing for a World Cup, just not the one in 2022. "It's getting harder to get to the World Cup, and it's getting easier to get to the Euros," Brian Kerr, the former Ireland manager, tells The Athletic. "Can we get back to the stage where we're thinking about finishing first or second in a qualifying group? We look a bit short."

Qatar were obliging opponents, though, for a team whose next assignment comes tonight against Portugal and Cristiano Ronaldo. Ireland's own CR7 — Callum Robinson — scored a hat-trick. Shane Duffy headed in the other goal and, if anything, it was a surprise Ireland did not add more. Final score: Ireland 4-0 Qatar. It was a sunrise of a smile on the face of manager Stephen Kenny, hugging his coaches, waving to the crowd.

The crowd seemed to like what they saw, too. They sang Kenny's name. There was a loud cheer whenever Jimmy "The Bell" Finnerty, who has been ringing his bell at Ireland games, home and away, since the 1970s, gave everyone a ding-a-ling. It was Ireland's second win in four days and, to put that into context, it had taken them nearly two years to register their previous two victories, against Andorra a few months ago and New Zealand in November 2019.

Tickets for the Portugal game sold out in a few minutes. "It has been a long, long time since that happened," says Ger Keville of You Boys in Green, an Ireland fans' forum. "A lot of people said Ronaldo was the reason. We firmly believe the Kenny factor is the major draw. People are excited by what Kenny is doing. That's the main reason."

That positivity might seem strange to outsiders when this is not, on the face of it, a particularly exciting era for what was once ranked the sixth-best football nation in the world. Kenny has been in the job since McCarthy's second spell in charge came to an end 17 months ago. Kenny did not win any of his first 10 games and any manager with that record will polarise opinion.

"The campaign to get rid of Stephen Kenny has been up and running for a very long time," Eamon Dunphy, the renowned Irish commentator, said last month. "There are some notable names supporting it. I see the project as him rebuilding Irish soccer from scratch. And doing work that others didn't do."

Dunphy is a useful ally. Others seem less inclined to believe in the brave new world. Richard Dunne is among the former players to question whether Kenny's contract ought to be renewed. The Luxembourg defeat tested everyone's faith.

"That was his low point," says Matt Holland, the former Ireland international. "Since then, there has been gradual improvement. But it's fair to say, when he first came in, the results weren't good. You were looking at what he was trying to do and thinking, 'Hmm, I'm not sure you've got the players to do what you're asking them to do'. All of a sudden, it's starting to take shape. But it has taken time. If we were having this conversation five or six games ago, there would have been a lot of question marks."

Since that Luxembourg defeat, Ireland have lost one game out of eight, turning down the volume on Kenny's critics. The momentum feels real. And, in the process, Kenny is trying to get away from the stereotype of Irish football. He does not make it mandatory to have a big man up front, in the manner of Quinn or Cascarino. It is not all about flying into tackles and outrunning opponents.

"It's possession-based with the aim of getting into good attacking positions, good control of the ball, bodies up the pitch," says Daryl Horgan, the Ireland striker. "Every team he's ever had has been expansive — flying full-backs, a striker scoring goals, players looking to get on the ball. That's what he wants, players to be brave and create havoc."

Horgan probably understands this better than anyone, bearing in mind he has worked with Kenny for longer than any player in the Ireland squad. His career began at Sligo Rovers in the League of Ireland and took him to Dundalk, managed by Kenny. Horgan won three consecutive titles with Dundalk and played for Kenny's team in Europe before signing for Preston North End in 2017. He is now at Wycombe Wanderers and, at 29, one of the older players in an Ireland squad where the emphasis is keeping the ball and playing out from the back.

"Don't get me wrong, he's pragmatic as well," he says. "We've gone to places in Europe (with Dundalk), been under the cosh and had to sit deep. It's not all airy-fairy 'we're going to play beautiful football and lose four-nil'. That doesn't happen."

A post on Twitter went viral after the Qatar win. Four years ago, it said, Martin O'Neill's Ireland passed the ball 79 times in the first half against Georgia. The modern team put together 38 passes in the build-up to Robinson's third goal against Qatar.

This is Irish football, the Kenny way.

"He's changing the brand of football," says Horgan. "He's bringing in a lot of young players — he's given 14 debuts — and some of these players, they're kids! They're 19, 20, I'm looking at them thinking they're going to be brilliant. There's a lot of very talented young players. When these players hit their peak at 26, 27, they'll have a ridiculous number of caps and experience. I'm sure that will be seen in our results."

The opening passage of Champagne Football, the warts-and-all book about the scandal-hit Football Association of Ireland, probably tells us a lot about how John Delaney ran the organisation as his personal fiefdom.

The scene was the Mount Juliet golf club in rural Kilkenny. October 2017.

It was Delaney's 50th birthday and, true to form, no expense was spared to make sure the great and the good of Irish football were reminded about his love for the good life.

Emma English, his fiancee, had arranged a previous birthday party with a teddy-bear theme because, as she told a television audience during a joint appearance on The Saturday Night Show, Delaney was her "teddy bear".

For his 50th, however, there was a James Bond theme. Bursts of flames from a pyrotechnic display greeted guests. There was a huge ice sculpture of a Walther PPK pistol, Bond's weapon of choice, surrounded by the spy's favourite martini cocktail glasses. The waiters dressed like villains from Live and Let Die. Cardboard cutouts showed Delaney's head superimposed above an Ireland shirt with "JD" on the captain's armband. The iconic Bond 007 logo had been changed to "John Delaney 0050" on posters.

Among the guests singing "happy birthday" and admiring a huge cake, styled like the Aviva Stadium, was Aleksander Ceferin, the UEFA president, as well as various other dignitaries from European football's governing body. Martin O'Neill, then the Ireland manager, was there. Sir Alex Ferguson had sent one of the video messages. Brendan O'Carroll, the star of Mrs Brown's Boys, introduced Delaney from the stage.

"For many football people in the crowd, the extravagance of the party made them laugh in bemusement," wrote Champagne Football's co-authors, Mark Tighe and Paul Rowan. "Some assumed Delaney, with his €360,000 salary, must be picking up the tab. Others weren't sure."

In total, the FAI ended up spending more than €80,000 on the party, including €26,293 to the venue, €25,000 to the party planner, €7,595 for chauffeurs and €3,609 for a fleet of helicopters that never got off the ground because it was too windy.

When Delaney made a payment to the FAI to cover the bill it was for a nice round number: €50,000. And the missing €30,000 or so? That was footed by the organisation that ran Irish football and that, on Delaney's watch, was already straying dangerously close to being financially shipwrecked.

The name's Delaney, John Delaney.

He is a disgraced figure now in football circles. Delaney had run the FAI into the ground over 15 years. He resigned as chief executive amid a series of revelations about the culture of excess he had created. The FAI required a bail-out from the Irish taxpayer and there was never going to be a quick fix for that kind of mismanagement. The FAI's current debts are around €65 million.

Add in the financial hit caused by COVID-19 and there are obvious challenges for the new-look association as it puts together its FAI Strategy for 2022-2025, having spent much of the last year on a consultation process around the country.

"The process, I believe, is pretty unique in our history in terms of the breadth and depth of people within our Irish football world who we will meet, listen to and engage with," says Jonathan Hill, the FAI's chief executive. "We are now embarking on a series of roadshows that will allow us to consider and debate what really matters for the future."

One of the focuses will be to improve the standards of grassroots football. Another will be to create better pathways for young players and also to develop the women's game. Plus there is a new emphasis on improving the League of Ireland — the competition Delaney described in 2014 as a "difficult child" — in a country where, pre-pandemic, more than 200,000 people used to board flights every year to watch Premier League fixtures.

The football landscape is changing in other ways. Brexit means that Ireland's up-and-coming footballers cannot join English clubs until the age of 18.

When Ireland's under-17s played Andorra recently there was not a single player signed up to an English club. The transfer of 16-year-old Kevin Zefi from Shamrock Rovers to Inter Milan is a sign about how things might progress. For the most part, however, the best young footballers in Ireland now have to pin their hopes on the youth development structure in their own country. Except, of course, that structure is nowhere near as sophisticated as the one in England.

Noel King, the former Ireland under-21 manager, has said that any Irish youngster who wants to succeed in the Premier League has to prove he is worth about £30 million.

Is it any wonder, therefore, that Kevin O'Neill's book describes England as a "land of broken dreams" for so many young Irish footballers?

"Nowadays, a young player might be the best in Dublin, or Cork, or Waterford," says the author. "They might be a certainty for the various under-age international sides and they might be idolised locally, from an early age, for possessing superior skills to their peers. But when they get to England, it's a whole new world.

"Regularly, they lack the physical prowess and technical skill of their new colleagues. This owes itself, primarily, to a lack of exposure to organised and efficient ways of training in Ireland. So, as soon as an Irish player arrives in England, they are playing catch-up. And what's more, they are not merely competing with the best young players from England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Far from it: they are up against players from every corner of the globe."

On that basis, how long before Ireland produces another Liam Brady, John Giles, Roy Keane or Paul McGrath?

Graham Barrett, the former Ireland international striker, answers that one — and what he says is a reminder about the scale of the task facing the FAI in the post-Delaney years.

"Put simply, we have stagnated while the football world has moved on. Our structures are outdated and have been failing us for a long time. We stood back and watched as other countries professionalised themselves in how they developed players from an earlier age and invested in facilities. As measures were implemented elsewhere to increase the numbers of properly qualified coaches, we did next to nothing."

Twenty years ago this week, Kerr was preparing to board the plane to Iran. He was the FAI's technical director at the time and the head of the youth teams that had produced some of the travelling squad.

Ireland lost 1-0 in front of a 120,000 crowd at the Azadi Stadium but went through on aggregate because of a 2-0 win in the first leg. There was euphoria and, on the team's flight home, a party so raucous that the pilot felt it necessary to tilt the plane to persuade everyone to return to their seats.

The players did the conga down the aisles. They helped drain the bar. They went through the full songbook — The Pogues, U2, all the classics — and Matt Holland gave everyone a rousing solo of Fields of Athenry before the plane touched down in Dublin just after 4am, to be greeted by hundreds of fans.

It was the last time Ireland qualified for a World Cup.

"I remember the game and the scenario," says Kerr. "At that time, we had players near the top of the Premier League such as Roy, Denis Irwin and John O'Shea at Manchester United, Steve Finnan at Liverpool, the Spurs players. Shay Given was at Newcastle. A very solid group of Premier League players."

Kerr, however, is old enough to recall other times when the Irish presence at England's top clubs could be sparse.

"It wasn't really until Jack Charlton's era that we got that regular flow," Kerr says. "I remember games in the 1960s and 1970s when we didn't have many of those players. We had Johnny Giles at Leeds, but the Arsenal team of Liam Brady, David O'Leary and Frank Stapleton, or Paul McGrath and Kevin Moran at Manchester United, came later. And in the Charlton times, it became acceptable to take players in from the diaspora, like Ray Houghton and John Aldridge. When we did have players in the top six clubs, it wasn't because of a system. It was because of the culture here and the character of individuals."

For a younger generation of football fans, it might seem strange to be told that nearly three-quarters of Charlton's squad (16 out of 22) for the 1990 World Cup in Italy were born in Britain and that the joke of the time was that FAI must stand for "Find Another Irishman".

The story, for example, of Charlton going to a match at Oxford to ask Aldridge, a Liverpudlian, if he would accept a call-up and finding out in the process that Houghton's father was from Donegal. A year after scoring the winner against England in the 1988 European Championship, Houghton admitted he still did not feel "the slightest bit Irish".

Kevin Sheedy went as far as alerting the Welsh football authorities that Ireland wanted to call him up — so would Wales like to get there first? The offer wasn't taken up, so Sheedy devoted himself to Ireland.

Or how about the story of Maidstone-born Andy Townsend cheering on England against Ireland in 1988 and then playing for Ireland against England in the World Cup two years later?

These days, however, it is increasingly difficult for Ireland to capitalise so easily on what used to be known as the "granny rule". The scouting networks of other countries are too smart, too clued-up. The English FA has an entire department to prevent losing out this way and, as Ireland discovered with Jack Grealish and Declan Rice, that can lead to considerable disappointment.

But there are other ways to be clever. When Chiedozie Ogbene, who moved from Nigeria with his family as a child, made his debut as an 89th-minute substitute against Hungary in June, the Rotherham United winger became the first Africa-born player to win an Ireland cap. Ireland's demographic is changing and, with immigration, new opportunities are coming up.

"When I was technical director I said we should encourage this, that we would have a different mix, that we might have fewer freckly red-heads," says Kerr.  "We are seeing that now with boys of west African and eastern European extraction coming through. That's a very good thing."

Kerr had two years as manager after Roy Keane's walk-out from the World Cup led, ultimately, to McCarthy losing his popularity and then his job. And by the time Giovanni Trapattoni had been appointed in 2008, the drop in quality was increasingly becoming clear.

"Trapattoni began to dip into the Championship," says Kerr. "He still had the likes of Robbie Keane and Damien Duff and Shay Given. But we no longer had as many players at teams in the top six in England. It wasn't necessarily about the ability of Irish players. The world had got smaller in terms of recruitment. Players were coming into England from Africa and South America. It meant fewer places for Irish players.

"Seamus Coleman at Everton was, and probably still is, our highest-ranked player. Matt Doherty is at a high-profile team in Spurs but hasn't been playing.

"When Ireland beat Italy at Euro 2016 and played well against France, I remember thinking we had some good ball-players like Robbie Brady. But it hasn't turned out like that. I don't think Martin or Mick had a great pool to work with. Hence the frustration with results — playing on the counter-attack, nil-nils, James McClean battling on the wing."

This had become Ireland's identity. There were highs such as Shane Long's wonder-goal to beat Germany in qualification for Euro 2016 but O'Neill had to field teams with Daryl Murphy as a latter-day Cascarino and then came the low of the 5-1 home defeat by Denmark in the 2018 World Cup play-off. The Danish midfielder Thomas Delaney called the Irish style of play "primitive".

This, in short, is what Kenny is trying to change.

"The biggest problem Ireland have had over the last few seasons is scoring goals," says Holland. "Unfortunately, Robbie Keanes don't grow on trees. Before Robbie, the top scorer in Ireland's history was Niall Quinn, with 21. And, in the absence of James McClean, there's nobody in double figures. Maybe Callum Robinson can kick on from here."

It certainly speaks volumes that after McClean (11 goals), West Bromwich Albion's Robinson is the joint-leading scorer in the squad, with six goals. The other player on that number is Duffy, a centre-half.

"Where are we now?" Kerr asks. "I think there's been a fairly substantial turnaround. It was necessary because the team was full of players over 27, 28. There were no emerging players and Stephen has addressed that. The question is: are they good enough to win matches at international level?

"My view would be that it (the change) has been too drastic. But little emerged over 10 years, few coming in at the under-23 bracket. There was a big drop-off and why was that? Some of it is because it's harder to break through, English clubs are fussier in recruitment, the financial crash in 2008 here and the reduction in investment by the FAI, the whole structure... then League of Ireland clubs took over development.

"We've always depended on the English clubs to develop our players, now it's on clubs here and they don't have the facilities or the coaches. There is some great work being done and one of the advantages is that players are breaking into the League of Ireland first-teams at 17, but there is no one going from St Patrick's Athletic to Manchester United like Paul McGrath. Players are going into the Championship and not higher."

An hour or so before Ireland's last home game, a group of journalists in the press box were looking through Ireland's squad to work out how many players had "gone upwards", career-wise, in the last year. The answer was one: Nathan Collins, who had moved from Stoke City to Burnley.

They also noted rather wistfully how few journalists from the English newspapers bothered to fly over these days to cover the games. A small thing, perhaps, but another sign of Ireland's diminished status. At some point, this proud football nation lost its star names and, with that, its wider appeal.

It is not always easy either to talk about a new start when the Luxembourg defeat, only eight months ago, was not the kind of ordeal that can easily be forgotten.

"Look, it's a tough, tough result," Horgan says. "This is not the Luxembourg of old. If anyone watched the game, they're a decent side. We didn't play as well as we should have and people look at the result and go, 'f**k, one-nil to Luxembourg, Jesus. Terrible performance'. But it's never as black and white as that."

Horgan was on the bench as Luxembourg, a nation measuring 51 miles in length, won with an 85th-minute goal. He was also among Ireland's substitutes in Portugal in September when the team were winning 1-0 only for Ronaldo to score two late headers.

"Two moments of brilliance," Horgan says. "I was up this morning and my little man was watching highlights of that game. The headers were so good. But our play was extremely good. Aaron Connolly could have had a penalty, we were very unfortunate. As a team performance, it was one of the best under the manager."

He sounds positive. Is Euro 2024 a reasonable target? "Absolutely."

Keville, from You Boys in Green, can also detect a growing sense of optimism from Ireland's supporters and, more than that, an understanding of what is realistic and what is not.

"It's a long time since I felt such positivity and energy in the crowd as it was in September when we drew 1-1 with Serbia. You could sense the fans were right behind this project. Then we beat Azerbaijan away. Let's keep a bit grounded here, it's Azerbaijan. But it was the manner we dealt with them — previous Ireland teams didn't win like that.

"The players played with glowing smiles, as they did against Qatar. The shackles are off. The young lads are pushing the more experienced lads and the buzz on the pitch is mirrored in the stands.

"Richard Dunne wrote in one column that "we always beat teams like Azerbaijan". But Dunne was in a team stacked with Premier League players — title-winners with Damien Duff and John O'Shea and a Champions League winner in Steve Finnan — that lost 5-2 to Cyprus. When you are building something from scratch, and from the remnants of a disgraced CEO who bankrupted the association, it is going to take time."

Realistically, that might mean a few more bumps on the road ahead but, if nothing else, Kenny seems determined to improve the new wave of players and make it attractive for the fans to watch.

"We have players with potential and it's bottomed out in terms of losing games and scrapping to arrange a friendly with Andorra (rather than more glamorous opponents)," says Kerr. "It's developing. The team's changing from the kick-and-rush image Stephen says we had. But they're not Robbie Keane, they're not Stephen McPhail or Damien Duff. There's a lot of fringe players finding their way."

GRMA

[Captain Obvious]

Doing well, 7/1 is a good price at the minute

Should be looking to exploit such a patched up Portugal defence starting tonight. Dias, Moutinho, Cancelo, Jota among the starters rested as Liam Brady said they have more of a focus on Serbia game.