Football News

The FAI want the Irish football constituency to lobby their politicians during the election cycle to subsidise their €10m per-year academy plan.

Damien Duff has been the prime proponent of the vision, citing the development of teen talent as the priority over the farce that is the elusive search for a senior team manager.

The other fiasco within the FAI surrounding now departed chief executive Jonathan Hill has compromised the justification for funding.

Shamrock Rovers boss Stephen Bradley supplied the uncomfortable truth this week amid the outcry over meagre handouts by noting the state paymasters first require an organisation they can trust to disperse grant aid.

Once the FAI switched the responsibility for producing gems from traditional schoolboy power to League of Ireland clubs – and Brexit rules curbed the flow of emigrants to England until they turned 18 – the inability of that sector to pay for it became apparent.

Few coaching staff, never mind players, are salaried for working within a system that now runs from U14 up to U20.

Just 10 of the 24 clubs part of that structure have an employee assigned solely to their underage system; Ireland being one of only four countries across Uefa’s 55 members with an average below one per club.

Ripples of excitement were generated by Micheál Martin promising on Newstalk how the Government would step up the plate but that was three years ago.

Will Clarke was recruited to the new role of Academy Development manager in that very same month in 2021.

Yesterday was the latest of his annual updates, a statistical presentation illustrating the widening gap to European peers caused by neglect.

In essence, the scarcity in gametime for Irish-born players across the top five leagues –

Damien Duff Shamrock Rovers Stephen Bradley