FOOTBALL FUNDITRY
Time for some intermittent research-based thoughts on the football issues of the day.
IRELAND 2021
Been watching way too much TV lately. Inevitably that has included football – the European Championships right now where England, Wales and Scotland are/have been all 'in the mix', and a little while ago, that unfortunate juxtaposition of:
a/ seeing Ireland's national team garner 'null points' (say it in French) from their first two games of the 2022 World Cup Qualifiers, coinciding with…
b/ a great sweep of nostalgia for Jack Charlton and his historically overperforming team at the turn of the last decade of the 20th century (1986-1996).
Unfortunate, especially for Stephen Kenny, the youngish newish current Ireland manager, but also for John Delaney, the disgraced former CEO of the FAI. The emerging view is that Kenny isn't 'the man' (his teams are winless since his appointment) and that Delaney has a lot to answer for (misappropriation and running out of money).
I am no particular fan of Kenny's and he may indeed not be 'the man' (see later), but there is little evidence that somebody else will do much better. His immediate, more illustrious predecessors didn't (do much better). Equally, there can be no doubt that Delaney was a scoundrel, but to suggest that his financial mismanagements lie at the heart of a demise of the 'national game' (i.e. the running of and the coaching at the amateur and professional clubs) is surely a 'stretch' too far. What demise, you might ask? And what about SkySports, in reference to attendances at League of Ireland games? Remember when more than 10,000 fans would come to the Lodge or Turners Cross to watch the Cork derby between Hibs and Celtic! Et cet era.
FIFA Rankings
FIFA started ranking international teams in 1992. The Irish national side under Jack Charlton were in top form at the time and were immediately ranked 10th. They moved up to 9th the following year, but by the end of Charlton's tenure in 1996 their ranking had fallen back to 36th. P36 is slightly below the long-term average P32 held by the team between 1992 and today (P42). There have been several upswings and downturns in the ranking in between. Commentators are in the habit of identifying these periods of better and worse fortune with the manager. A name of one manager is easier to remember than of a whole squad of players, so I'll stick to the habit for now, although my contention is that it is primarily the quality (such an overused 'punditrous' word) of the players, not of the manager that drives the ranking.
Post-Jack, things first recovered a bit during Mick McCarthy's first tenure, and by the time Mick and Roy Keane fell out at the World Cup in Japan in 2002, Ireland were back up to 14th, to climb further to P12 the following year. When McCarthy left, a downward trend set in, which saw the ranking fall to an absolute nadir (so far) in 2013 of 67th. It was the end of the short-lived Giovanni Trapattoni 'era' during which the rankings had recovered from a dip back up to 22nd in 2011, reflecting the team's ability to qualify for the 2012 European Championships. However, at the Euro's, the team showed poorly, and at the end of 2013 Trapattoni was gone.
Martin O'Neill was the next man asked to have a go, and by 2016, he, assisted by Roy Keane, had led the team to another European Championships qualification. The team's ranking went back up to P23. This particular Euro's the team did better and advanced to the last 16, to be beaten there by the hosts France. Things went downhill quickly again thereafter. The slide halted to some extent under a second interim Mick McCarthy tenure, but is threatening to accelerate now as Stephen Kenny's selections struggle for results.
These ups-and-downs are not particularly extreme, and other nations have experienced much the same, logically not synchronously – when they were up, they were down, and so on. The standard deviation from the average is the measure to verify this; so here are the stats for a few selected nations – Belgium, the current FIFA no 1; Luxembourg, Ireland's recent nemesis; Norn Iron and Scotland (two of the other three 'home' nations satelliting the English FA and the self-styled Premier League); Mexico from The Americas; and an African nation, Ghana.
Only Mexico's (rather-high) ranking shows less volatility than Ireland's. There is a reason. Mexico always qualify for every World Cup, since they compete for qualification in the quite weak CONCACAF (Confederation of North, Central America and Caribbean Association Football) region. Competing at World Cups is good for FIFA rankings; so, if you always compete, you'll always have a pretty good one.
Northern Ireland's rankings have the highest standard deviation of the selected set, and at 29 imply, statistically ceteris paribus, that they have a c 1.5% chance of ranking P1 at some stage. The Republic's chances, given a 15 standard deviation from an average 32, are actually slightly better at c 2%, and both teams from the Emerald Isle have a better chance than Mexico's c 1%.
Belgium obviously have a better chance again – they are P1 at the moment. The chance of that being maintained is about 10%, and, obviously again, the longer they maintain it, the better, statistically, their chance of continuing to maintain it.
What about Ireland's best ever P9 in 1993? What statistically is the implied chance of that being repeated? About 7%, so a greater overperformance than Belgium's current P1, but not nearly as amazing as Scotland's P14 of 2007 when Alex McLeish was briefly (1 year) in charge, or Ghana's P16 of 2010 when they were managed by a man named Milovan Rajevac (bad joke - not a war criminal), which ranking statistically has/had a chance of c 4%.
So, here are my contentions.
1/ The fluctuations are mostly luck, and mostly the luck of having the right players available at the right time.
2/ The averages about which these fluctuations range are mostly a function of playing population and money spent per player. The rough proxies for these are national population and GDP per capita. Multiply the two and what you're left with is good-old GDP, national income.
Ranking Lift vs GDP
Intuitively, you'd suspect that poor countries get more bang (ranking lift) for their buck (in billion dollars), and this is borne out by my sample of six, as follows. There are 210 Football Associations (FAs) ranked by FIFA. Not all of these Associations run the football of independent nation states (i.e. legitimate answers that Richard Osman would allow on Pointless), but hey-ho, the GDP of the entities they operate in are known, so we can relate their ranking lift above 210 in 2021 to their annual GDP (2019 figures), for example Ghana's uplift in 2021 is 158 (P210 - P52), the country's GDP is $57.3b and so their bang/buck is 2.7 rankings/billion. You can do this for each of the six FAs I've selected, and for every year from 1992 to 2021, and plot the results to get the following chart.
1/ the poorer the 'nation', the better it is at 'converting' GDP into ranking uplift
2/ the richest their 'nation' the steadier their ranking uplift versus GDP
3/ Northern Ireland is much better than Luxembourg at GDP 'conversion'; Ghana even better still
4/ The Republic's 'conversion rate' is in line; better than Belgium's, worse than Scotland
5/ Luxembourg and in particular N. Ireland have improved their 'conversion rates' since 1992
6/ The other 'nations' show no discernible long-term change in 'conversion rate'
Adjusted Ranking vs GDP Ranking
Now, football everywhere competes with other sports for popularity and funding. In particular, there is another professional outdoor team sport played with an inflated 'leather' ball of considerable popularity in the 'home nations': Rugby. In England, they even play two different codes of the game, and in Ireland and Northern Ireland, a third outdoor inflated ball team sport vies with both Rugby and Association Football for hearts, funds and minds: Gaelic Football (GAA).
There are a few other countries where rugby is a serious rival for players and money: Wales, Scotland, France, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. Other countries besides play rugby as well, but the popularity is an order of magnitude less (Italy, Romania, Argentina, Japan) or these are countries where association football is barely relevant (Fiji, Togo). And, of course in Australia they play 'Aussie Rules' as well as both rugby codes, and in the USA, there's American Football.
In all of these countries then, only a fraction of the folk who are into outdoor team sport with an inflated 'leather' ball are into association football, and it is reasonable to argue that as a proxy for people involved and effort applied, GDP should be adjusted, say, as follows.
Anyway, applying the proposed adjustment and then ranking this adjusted GDP (rather than using $b values, since national income distributions are just as skewed as personal ones) for a plot against FIFA ranking in 2021 gives some interesting insights (see below). The dotted line is a sixth!-order polynomial best-fit line. All the countries above that line have a lesser FIFA ranking than their (adjusted) GDP should warrant. As you can see top left, all the strong western European nations and Mexico (yellow square bullet) and Brazil underperform a little compared with what their GDP would predicate, and bottom right, all the minnows outperform what you might expect given their GDP ranking.
Two other countries are worth highlighting – Uruguay, an almost constant outperformer, and Serbia, Ireland's recent nemesis, also playing 'out of their skins' at the moment (allowing us the thought that Ireland's recent 2-3 loss to them after leading for much of the game was really quite good). Finally, Luxembourg - well, looking at where they are on the chart at present, Ireland should have done better, but on the other hand you can really only expect the Luxembourgeoisie to improve further.
Serbia
Up until recently, Serbia's 'motor room' comprised two no-nonsense ball-winners, Matic and Milivojevic, and Dusan Tadic. Matic, of course is one of Jose Mourinho's favorite players, having been a key man in Chelsea's 2014-15 PFL title, and re-signed by Mourinho during his Manchester United tenure. Milivojevic is not as well-known as his fellow M-room member, but has been at Crystal Palace since 2017. Captaining the side and taking the penalties, his contributions, few would disagree, continue to be key in keeping Crystal Palace in 'The Prem'. Milivojevic and Matic are both in their thirties now and have both retired from international football, but Dusan Tadic, the star of the threesome, who spent 4 seasons at Southampton from 2014 to 2018 playing nearly every game as Southampton finished 7th, 6th, and 8th in successive season, continues to turn out for his country.
Current Liverpool stars Mané and Van Dijk were also members of Tadic's outperforming Southampton team, as was Ireland's Shane Long, getting regularly on the score sheet at the time. However, when Van Dijk was sold to Liverpool in 2017, the wheels nearly came off the bus for Southampton. Relegation was only just avoided, and Tadic returned to The Netherlands (he had played for FC Twente before joining Southampton) to join Ajax.
Captaining Ajax, Tadic led his club to the semi-finals of the Champions League in 2019, where they lost on 'away goals' to Tottenham, but beat Real Madrid on the way, a game in which Tadic was acknowledged far and wide as 'man-of-the-match'. Meanwhile, Shane Long, still at Southampton, was starting to lose his edge and was finding himself in-and-out of the team. Currently, Shane is out on loan at Bournemouth in the EFL Championships (that's the league below the Premier League), where he continues to miss his scoring touch of yore.
To conclude, Serbia are probably on a downward trajectory at the moment, and it's the 'quality' or lack of it of the available players that will drive this, and not the managers, Serbia having had twenty of them in twenty years since 2001.
Uruguay
Alright, next, Uruguay, another outperforming footballing nation. Reason? Well there's Manyoo's Edinson Cavani, but then there's Luis Suarez, at 34 still barely past his prime of arguably being the best (i.e. most effective) player in the world – skill, energy and aggression; you wouldn't like to play against him, but you'd love playing with him. And as he fades ever so slightly, Real Madrid's Valverde is taking over Suarez' never-say-die ends-justify-means national team leadership.
Just like for Ireland's best players, there is a 'premier' league where Valverde's and Suarez' teammates naturally congregate: Spain's La Liga. Of Uruguay's current squad, two are at Real Madrid, three at Atletico Madrid, two at Getafe, and one each at Valencia and Barcelona.
Wales
Wales? Well that's the team Gareth Bale plays for whose sporting priorities are reported by the popular press to be 1. Wales, 2. Golf. He currently also plays for Spurs every now and then, and he has won four Champions League (gold) medals at Real Madrid, whose registered player he remains. Other rather good Welsh players at the moment are Aaron Ramsey (Juventus), Dan James (Manchester United) and Ben Davies and Joe Rodon (both Tottenham as well).
Norn Iron
And then there's Northern Ireland, also and seriously exceeding expectations right now. Johnnie Evans (Leicester, but Manyoo would like him back) and Stuart Dallas (Leeds, who keep more clean sheets than you think) are very good defenders, but that really is the only excuse the North have for their overachieving, the vast majority of the rest of the current squad either playing in the EFL Championships, or in the Scottish Premiership, comprised of clubs that (with two exceptions) would find it difficult to stay in the EFL Championships. It's a handy destination if you like to go home to Co Down or Armagh on your weekends off. They speak a similar English dialect there as well and the money is (a little) better, but it's not really the place that'll take you to 'the next level'.
Scotland
Scotland? Hmm, well there are barely more players from the Scottish Premiership in the Scottish national squad (9) than there are in the Northern Irish squad (8), but most of the rest of them play in the English Premiership and not the Championship. With Andy Robertson (Liverpool) and Kieran Tierney (Arsenal) patrolling and marauding down the flanks, Scott McTominay (Manyoo) and John McGinn running the midfield engine room and Ché Adams (Southampton) and Ryan Fraser (Newcastle) up front for goals, Scotland have the players to hit the best-fit Ranking vs GDP line, but they don't (GDP adjusted by factor 2 for Rugby or not), although we have seen their rankings are more volatile than most, noting that back in 2007 they ranked as high as P14 with barely a better squad; Craig Gordon (Sunderland) was in goal, Gary Naismith (Everton) and Alan Hutton (soon to move to Tottenham) were the wing backs, Christian Dailly (West Ham) in the heart of the defense, Darren Fletcher (Manyoo) ditto in midfield, and Kris Boyd and Lee McCulloch (both at Rangers) ran the attack.
Since 2007, eight managers have tried to rediscover this form of 2007, but so far to no avail. Gordon Strachan, who talks a good game, if somewhat unintelligibly, held down the post the longest, but was no more successful than his predecessors or successors. Perhaps the clue lies in the fact that the Big Firm of Rangers and Celtic pay their professionals just enough (c £1m a year on average) to make a move to the alien South less than a no-brainer, and that these two clubs continuously hoover up the emerging talent (on less than a fifth of £1m), as and when it manifests itself (at schoolboy level or at Hearts or Hibernian, or St Mirren or Kilmarnock, or Aberdeen or Dundee, etc). Once playing for the Big Firm though, everybody looks good when they're winning and a tendency to disimprove rather than improve has to be inevitable.
OK, from time to time, a big move to England does come up for those who want it, but generally that then happens late in their careers, when those players are what they are, at their personal zenith. Examples? Well, the aforementioned Craig Gordon and Alan Hutton, also Charlie Adams, Steven Fletcher, Robert Snodgrass. It's an interesting theory and it suits my thesis well, but it is rather gain-sayed by all the other Scottish stars who were a huge success in England; Kenny Dalglish, Gordon Strachan, Denis Law, Billy Bremner, Garry McAllister, Graeme Souness, Alan Hansen, John Robertson, Asa Hartford, Joe Jordan, John Wark, Steve Nicol, Colin Hendry, Scott Gemmill, Tommy Docherty, Stuart McCall, Don Hutchison, the list goes on.
However, bar the first two mentioned who came to England in mid-career, and the last two who were born in England and never played in Scotland, all the others signed for English clubs as youths or in their very early twenties, so with room to improve, which suits my thesis well again.
Belgium
Finally and quickly now, there is Belgium. May I assume that we can all agree that their current no.1 ranking is not any particular reflection of the acumen of current manager Roberto Martinez (previously sacked by relegation-threatened FPL clubs Wigan and Everton), nor of his predecessor Marc Wilmots, the man in charge when Belgium first hit the P1 spot in 2015, given that Martinez has been able to maintain that ranking (despite himself!) with only a brief dip to P5 in 2017. Rather, may I suggest it's the good fortune of an emergence of an exceptional generation of Belgian-born and -trained players that is at the heart of the success.
Right now, in a slightly particular order, the starting eleven includes Kevin de Bruyne, Thibaut Courtois, Eden Hazard and Romelu Lukaku. Hazard may be loosing his edge as cumulative injuries begin to take their toll, but the other three are simply near-best-in-the-World players in goal, in midfield and in attack. In defense, a very fortunate changing of the guard is allowing a gentle goodbye to Tottenham's aging Alderweireld and ex Vertonghen whilst welcoming talented young guns Castagne (Leicester City) and Dendoncker (Wolves). Elsewhere on the pitch, the Leicester pair of Youri Tielemans and Denis Praet and Brighton's Leandro Trossard provide competition for Eden's younger brother Thorgan, and Axel Witsel and Thomas Munier, who all play for Dortmund in the Bundesliga, and if they need a battering ram there's still always Crystal Palace's Christian Benteke.
Back in 2015, Courtois, Alderweireld, Vertonghen, de Bruyne and Hazard were already mainstays in the team, led at the time by Manchester City captain, Vincent Kompany, and also including Tottenham's Moussa Dembele and Naser Chadli.
The perceived wisdom in Belgium is that all these players are a product of a radical intervention by the Belgian FA in under-age football right at the start of the new millennium, refocusing training on dribbling, the duel and defence-splitting passes, rather than man-marking and winning, and prescribing 5-man and 8-man competitions for younger age groups. Hmm, doesn't sound that different to what they have been doing in The Netherlands for the last fifty years – in football and in hockey. I'm sure it helped, but I'll reiterate – the main thing has been a lucky dip of players.
Republic of Ireland
Finally to Ireland then, during their modern FIFA Ranking era from 1992 to now. One could go back further, like Johnny Giles likes to do, regaling us of former Irish greats, but back in those dim and distant days there were no rankings and fewer games. It's hard to say whether those teams of the 60s, 70s and 80s were ever more than average or how good the players were.
Giles himself was world class, I think all agree – the Liam Brady of his era, but whether Noel Cantwell, Charlie Hurley, Mick Meagan and Shay Brennan were anything more than solid, I am not sure. And by his own admission, Eamonn Dunphy, who was capped a very respectable 22 times (more than e.g. Meagan or Brennan), was a journeyman. Were his better-known contemporaries like Tony Dunne, Joe Kinnear, Paddy Mulligan, Eoin Hand, Terry Conroy and Ray Treacy any better? Probably, but not a lot.
So the thing is that the players Jack Charlton had were simply a gifted bunch – good skills, great fighting spirit, well-trained and well-experienced at the highest level, which at the time for them was the English First Division morphing into Premier League. Let's have a look at the team then that famously beat Italy 1-0 at the 1994 World Cup in the United States.
Defense vs Italy
In goal, Packie Bonner, who learned his football with Keadue Rovers in Co Donegal, but signed for Glasgow Celtic in 1978 at age 18 and never left. I don't think anybody would contend Keadue were a hotbed of football development in the late 1970s, and keeping goal for Celtic can hardly have been the most challenging gig to be found. So, arguably, Bonner was a weaker link in Charlton's team, but equally also he was clearly gifted.
A defender all his life, Charlton, set up his team 5-4-1, and at the heart of his defence that day were three simply outstanding players - Aston Villa's Paul McGrath and Steve Staunton, and Coventry's Phil Babb. First choice Kevin Moran of Manchester United was injured, so Babb was making his debut, whilst Arsenal's accomplished Dave O'Leary had been left at home as he had a dodgy achilles tendon and Jack considered him a bit too fancy. Let's just look at the background and the pedigree of these five central defenders that Charlton was able to avail of during his tenure.
Paul McGrath was born out of wedlock to an Irish mother and a Nigerian father and grew up in an orphanage in Ireland, playing football for first Pearse Rovers, then Dalkey United and finally St Patrick's Athletic, before signing for Manchester United at the age of 23 in 1982, where he was first choice centre-back for 7 years before being sold to Aston Villa, where his first team career continued on for a further 7 years.
Kevin Moran had been McGrath's central defensive partner at Manyoo from 1982 to 1988, but like McGrath had moved on since then and had just captained Blackburn Rovers to the runners-up spot behind United in that year's Premier League. Moran, born and reared in Ireland, had been a dual before signing for United aged 22. Dual means he played both GAA and soccer, and at the highest level, coming out for Bohemians in the League of Ireland and winning two All-Ireland County championships with Dublin. More so than McGrath who was in his early 30s, age at 38 was starting to catch up with Moran and he was injury prone.
Steve Staunton came from Dundalk, and like Moran had been a dual in his young years, coming out for his county and Dundalk FC until he signed for Liverpool aged 18 in 1986. Staunton, like McGrath, was now playing for Aston Villa, where, together with midfielder Andy Townsend (see later), they had finished Premier League runners-up to Manchester United, the previous year.
Phil Babb, Moran's replacement on the day, a relative youngster born in London in 1970, had learned his football at Millwall, and was playing for Coventry, a premiership club at the time, and would go on to sign for Liverpool that autumn, where he became a regular first choice centre-back.
David O'Leary, 36 at the time and left behind, like the others also had an outstanding pedigree. An Irish Londoner like Babb, he had joined Leeds United on 'a free' the previous year, after 18 years as a youth and then an ever-present first team player at Arsenal.
Flanking McGrath and Babb at the back, Jack availed of the considerable services of Denis Irwin and Terry Phelan. Irwin was a Corkman, who had joined Leeds United as a youth and had moved to Manchester United in 1990, where he held down the left-back position over the entire last decade of the 20th century.
Phelan, like Babb and O'Leary, was another English Irishman and had been a regular at the infamous no-nonsense Wimbledon Football Club – the 'crazy gang' that featured Vinnie Jones at centre-back and Dennis Wise in midfield, two particularly 'nasty' players. Wimbledon had famously won the FA Cup in 1988, beating Liverpool (including two other players in the Irish squad in 1994, Ray Houghton and John Aldridge; more about them later as well). By 1994, Wimbledon, although still in the Premiership were struggling, and Phelan had joined Manchester City, where again he was a regular.
Midfield vs Italy
Jack's midfield on the day was easily as experienced and stellar as his defense, comprising a young Roy Keane and Jack's captain Andy Townsend, flanked left and right by John Sheridan and the aforementioned Ray Houghton. Roy Keane at 22 years of age was the odd man out here, as the other three were all in or near their thirties (30, 29 and 32) and born in the UK.
Keane from Cork had joined Nottingham Forest as an 18-year old in 1990. Forest had won back-to-back European Cups in the 1980s, but together with the rest of the English teams since 1985 had been banned from playing in Europe, subsequent to English fans running amok at the European Cup Final between Liverpool and Juventus in Brussels' Heysel Stadium, and the consequent death of 39 mostly Italian fans. Domestically, Forest, however, were still serial cup finalists, and Keane a year after signing was in the team contesting and losing the League Cup Final against Manchester United. However, at the end of 1992, Forest lost their (and England's) captain and central defender Des Walker to Sampdoria and striker Teddy Sheringham to Spurs, and with manager Brain Clough's right-hand man and steadying influence Peter Taylor retired, Forest were relegated in 1993, at which stage Keane was sold to Manchester United for a then record £3.75m.
Andy Townsend is a Londoner. Just like you can hear Keane is from Cork when he shares his wit and wisdom with us on TV, today you can still hear where Townsend hails from when he similarly regales us with his views. In 1994, Townsend had been playing in the top flight of English football for nigh-on a decade, first at Southampton, then Norwich, then Chelsea and since 1992 at Aston Villa, who had bought him from Chelsea for £2.1m. Roy Keane won't thank me for saying this, but Townsend was a very similar player to Keane, box-to-box, hard in the tackle and an eye for goal, the only difference being that Townsend did it with a smile, Keane with a growl.
John Sheridan came from Manchester and in 1994 was playing his football for Sheffield Wednesday. At Wednesday, Sheridan, partnering Chris Waddle in midfield and managed by Trevor Francis, two of the best attacking midfielders that ever played the game in England, had the previous year lost both the FA and League Cup Final to Arsenal and finished 7th in the League, having finished 3rd in 1992.
Ray Houghton was a Scot. Born in Glasgow, Houghton eschewed Scottish senior football entirely by signing for West Ham aged 17 in 1979. With his very best years at Liverpool from 1987 to 1992 behind him, finishing 1-2-1-2 in the league in successive seasons, Houghton in 1994 was Townsend's midfield partner at Aston Villa, where together with Paul McGrath and Steve Staunton, they had finished 10th in the league that year (2nd the year before).
At 32, Houghton was the same age as Ronnie Whelan, his former teammate at Liverpool, who had enjoyed the same 1998 to 1992 years of Liverpool domination of English football. A Dubliner, Whelan, aged 18 had signed for Liverpool in 1979, but was now aging less well than Houghton and injury-prone. However, when fit, Liverpool manager Graeme Souness always selected Whelan. Like defender Dave O'Leary, a skillful player with an eye for goal, Whelan nevertheless was only ever used sparingly, generally again it is considered because his qualities did not suit Jack's no-nonsense approach to football.
Attack vs Italy
Up front, Ireland were less blessed with players. Dublin-born Frank Stapleton, who, aged 18 in 1974 had signed for Arsenal, had played more than 200 games and scored 75 goals for the Gunners, before being sold to Manchester United for £900,000, where another 200 plus appearances had seen him bag a further 60 goals. Aged 38 in 1994 and still playing for (and managing) Bradford City, Stapleton had been a regular in Jack's fist few seasons in charge, but injuries having slowed him down, he was no longer part of the squad.
Niall Quinn, also from Dublin, but a triple (playing GAA football and hurling for his county, as well as soccer for his local club Manortown), had also joined Arsenal as a youth (17) a decade later in 1984. Quinn had lost his first team place at Arsenal to new signing and England international Alan Smith in 1987 and had moved to mid-table Manchester City for £800,000 in 1990. Like Stapleton, a no-nonsense target man and great header of the ball, Quinn's assists undoubtedly (stats not readily available) will have outshone the 66 goals he scored at City in again circa 200 appearances, until a third move in 1996 saw him join Sunderland where another 200 plus appearances saw him net a further 61 goals. But in 1994 he was injured and had not travelled to the Unites States with the team for the World Cup.
However, there was also Liverpool's John Aldridge, an Englishman of Liverpool Irish background, who mid-career in 1987 had moved from Oxford United to his home city club as a replacement for Ian Rush, who had joined Juventus. A very different player to Quinn and Stapleton, Aldridge was a prolific goal-poacher, scoring almost a goal a game, both at Oxford and for Liverpool. However at the end of 1988 Rush returned to Liverpool and a year later, Aldridge, no longer making the first team, made the very unusual move at the time to La Liga's Real Sociedad, where his goal-scoring was again prolific. But adjusting to living in inland Spain proved difficult for John and family, and he moved again in 1991, back to Liverpool, but not to Liverpool FC but to Tranmere Rovers, who were playing in England's second tier at the time. In his first season at Tranmere, he netted 40 times. Tranmere never won promotion, but the next seven seasons, Aldridge scored a goal every 1.7 games (that's about 30 goals a season). However, in the U.S.A. in 1994 Aldridge was about to turn 36 and his speed and stamina were waning.
So, Quinn, Stapleton, Aldridge – world class footballers. But one was injured, one was old and no longer considered, and the third was also getting on. But a Scotsman, Tommy Coyne, at 32 only slightly younger than Aldridge, despite having topped the Scottish goals scored table three times and at different clubs (Dundee, Celtic and Motherwell) had never been selected for Scotland when asked in 1992 to declare for Ireland, which he did. Coyne was Jack's lone forward against Italy and Aldridge came on as a sub towards the end of the game, whilst Tony Cascarino (also 32), a Scotto-Italian cockney descended from an Irish granddad, who was in and out of the Chelsea first team and was the only other forward in Jack's squad, remained on the bench for the entire game and the entire tournament bar a last-ditch substitution in Ireland's quarterfinal loss to The Netherlands.
Summary: 1994 vs 2021
To summarize, five of the starting 11 in 1994 were over 30 years of age, and four (of which 3 over 30) all played their club football for Aston Villa, and had just finished 10th in the Premiership and won the League Cup, and had finished 2nd in the Prem the year before. A further two of the 11 played for Manchester United, who had just won the League for the second year in a row. One played for 11th finishing Premiership side Coventry and was to go on to play for Liverpool in the Prem the next season and finish 4th, one played for Sheffield Wednesday who had finished 7th, and one played for Manchester City, who had finished a creditable (by their standards at the time) 16th. And two players (the keeper and the centre forward) played in Scotland. Eight of the 13 who were on the pitch during the game were born in England (9 including Paul McGrath who however grew up in Ireland. The other five (excepting keeper Packie Bonner) had all joined big English clubs in their late teens and honed their skills and aggression there.
In contrast, only four of the 15 players used by Stephen Kenny for the 90 minutes against Luxembourg were Englishmen, and only two of those played in the Premier League, along with five of the Irishmen that came onto the field – three at clubs to be relegated at the end of the season, two (and both in and out of the team) at clubs dicing with relegation, and only two, Seamus Coleman and Matt Doherty, at top-half-of-the-table clubs. However, Matt Doherty at Spurs was not first choice in his position, and Everton's position at the time was an Ancelotti accident.
On average, Stephen Kenny's cohort (a military Roman word for a small group of soldiers that share a tent together, introduced into Celto-English by Stephen's namesake Pat to cover any group of people of any size) on the pitch that evening were only three years younger than Jack Charlton's in New York in 1994 at 26 vs 29, reflecting mainly a slightly younger (31 vs 33) and slightly smaller (5 vs 6) sub-cohort (!) of tricenarians (30somethings, not to be confused with centurions). The notion that Kenny could call only on callow youth is wrong – on the night only his goalkeeper and his substitute striker were teenagers.
Below is a table of the top 26 players available to Charlton in 1994 and to Kenny in 2021; p stands for picked to start, s for substitute used, b for on the bench, and h stayed at home. I've laboured the point enough – the gulf in quality is clear.
So why is this? Is it because the coaching at under-age level in Ireland being nowadays so poor, the developed Irish talent is rarely good enough to attract the big English clubs? It seems unlikely. I mean it was hardly any great shakes in the 1980s. And clearly it has nothing to do with Stephen Kenny's coaching. He can only work with the talent at his disposal, and, as said, that isn't great.
Internationalisation of the Premier League
Up until 1978, the English Football League (EFL, the governing body that ran Division 1 to Division 4) ruled that foreign players could only be fielded by their clubs if they had lived in the United Kingdom for two years. Footballers from Ireland, however, were the exception, since when (the south of) Ireland gained its independence from the UK in 1922, the continuing freedom of movement within the British Isles for the newly independent Irish was part of the deal and as we know a continuous stream of Irish emigrants found their way to and work in England, decade after decade.
The UK and Ireland had joined the EEC, the forerunner of the European Union, in 1973. Freedom to settle and work anywhere in the community's territories for all its citizens was a basic tenet of the EEC, and in 1978, the Football League was forced to remove its rule on foreign players from within the EEC, and the League dropped the 2-year rule altogether. However, non-EEC players were still required to apply for a work permit, which unless they were an international would not be granted.
In practice, however, nothing much changed, and fifteen years later, Manchester United, champions of the first 1992/93 Premier League, counted three players not from the British Isles – Peter Schmeichel, Andrei Kanchelskis and Eric Cantona.
The English Premier League (EPL), of course, was set up by the clubs playing in the 1991/92 EFL First Division, with an eye towards selling TV rights for live matches to the highest bidder and then distributing this income across the teams in the new league instead of sharing it with the lower divisions of the EFL 'Pyramid'. Up until then, there had always been some selling of rights, and ITV, the UK's commercial competitor to the national BBC, had last paid £44m to the EFL in 1988 for the exclusive rights to screen a limited number of live matches a year till 1992. Numbers were limited because the fear was fans would not come to the match, but watch from home instead.
Recently there has been great uproar about the creation of a European Super League (ESL). It is worth reflecting that conceptually the ESL is exactly the same as the EPL – 'our income is our own', the only difference being that promotion and relegation to the EPL was well-defined and increased from 2 to 3 from the get-go, whereas the ESL's proposal has been 'a bit vague' on this matter.
The EPL's foundation dovetailed perfectly with the emergence and initial troubles of Satellite TV. In 1990, Sky and BSB, both loosing money hand over fist, had merged to form BSkyB, selling subscription TV to watch mostly movies. Backed by the deep pockets of parent company, News Corporation, owners in the UK of The Sun, The News of the World, The Times and The Sunday Times newspapers, BskyB trumped ITV's interest in the broadcasting rights for the new Premier League with a bid of £304m for 60 live games per season for the next five years.
Within a matter of months, BskyB had increased its subscription base by a million viewers, and, already having stemmed the losses through a tough restructuring program, posted a healthy £186m operating profit. How much of this was left after servicing debt I have not researched, but from then on, it was onwards and upwards for both BskyB and the Premier League.
So what you might well ask is the relevance of this to the success or failure of the Irish national soccer team? Well, despite what some owners and directors might have dreamt, the extra TV money from Sky did not improve their club's profitability much, as to remain competitive and stay in the Premier League most of the new money had to be expended on players. Thus, as the TV funding grew, so did players wages and more rapidly than anywhere else in the world, and thus more and more foreign players were attracted to play in the Premier League, despite the climate and the culture, leaving less and less room for Irish (and English and Scottish and Welsh) players to play and develop at the 'highest level'.
The Daily Mail estimates that the sale of TV rights by the Premier League currently generates about £3,000m per annum, half of which today comes from overseas, the other half from BskyB and its late-to-the-party domestic UK rival BT. However, at least domestically, the trend has peaked.
UK-Born Players
What we also see from the comparison of Irishmen playing football in the Premier League in 1992-93 vs. those playing there today, is that the number of those born in the UK has more than halved. How can this be? The percentage of UK inhabitants of Irish descent can hardly have changed much in just one generation. The 'granny-rule' and other means at the disposal of players to declare for an Irish international career with more certainty of being selected and less compromise to their club careers have not changed.
For whatever reasons then, today there must be a greater group of players who could be, but have not been persuaded to play for Ireland. And yes, here's a team of players who, bar one who plays in the Bundesliga instead, currently play at Premier League clubs, and who would be/have been eligible to play for Ireland, but don't.
Recruitment
So, here is the challenge. Where is the next Jack Charlton whose personality and reputation can sell the idea of playing for a winning Ireland team, a brotherhood of Celtic warriors, one for all and all for one, and so on. Trapattoni wasn't that man, and hardly could have been expected to be; McCarthy might have been, but as a player had been that little bit too much of a journeyman; O'Neill and Keane should have been, but failed, perhaps for want of trying; and Kenny, well obviously that is hopeless.
Progressive, attack-minded coach that he might be, Stephen Kenny is unlikely to be able to persuade players faced with choice, that Ireland is right for them, and that playing under his tutelage will benefit them. It's very hard to know who could, but let me put a name out there anyway – Sam Allerdyce!
Big Sam, like Big Jack, still has points he wants to prove. Despite the myth, attacking football is not beyond him (so he says and see his tenure at Bolton Wanderers, now long ago) and by all accounts he is a 'modern methods' man. I believe he is genuinely highly regarded by players – he gets results and he is fair.
And famously, Allardyce first job in football management was as player/manager at Limerick FC, back in 91/92, yes, concurrent with the Jack Charlton era, so he knows all about how important soccer success is in Ireland. Apart from that, he is best mates with Carl Davenport, Cork's very own George Best, serial goal poacher for Cork Celtic and Hibernians during the 70s, but of a better constitution than poor George and still very much alive. In short, Sam has a 'grá' for Ireland.
We won't mention Sam's alleged financially dodgy dealings, but with Delaney gone, the opportunity for any of that is obviously no longer.
Nevertheless, perhaps Allardyce is not the very best man to convince players of dual nationality that it is not only in their best interest but their very duty to declare for Ireland. Perhaps a few part-time ambassadors/selectors are needed for that. Niall Quinn or Roy Keane are obvious candidates, but whoever is appointed to do the lobbying, the FAI should back them up and provide direction with intensive backroom research and scouting.
