What a year it’s been for Irish football, both at home and at international level. The Boys in Green united the nation at Euro 2016, Dundalk raised the profile of our own league like never before, and individual players lit up the stage. Here’s ten of the best moments of the last year.
Following on from Dundalk FC: Champ10ns 2014 and last year’s Dundalk FC: The Double 2015, Dundalk FC: Making History is the third book in a series that tells the story of a momentous season for the Lilywhites.
From the brink of extinction to history makers, Dundalk FC are writing new chapters in one of Irish football’s greatest ever stories. Gavin McLaughlin charts the Lilywhites’ incredible European saga.
From Póg Mo Goal Magazine, Issue 3. Shamrock Rovers’ breakthrough as the first Irish team to qualify for the group stages of a major European competition was supposed to herald an era of domestic domination. However it hasn’t worked out that way, writes Macdara Ferris.
Did you watch the Europa League final last week? Four hundred Bilbao fans didn’t. At least, not where they were supposed to. Instead of setting down in the Romanian capital Bucharest for the final, the supporters’ plane landed almost 400 miles away in Budapest, according to Spanish TV.
The gaze of the footballing press continues to focus on Shamrock Rovers as the countdown to their White Hart Lane meeting with Spurs continues. In particular, former Tottenham player Rohan Ricketts has figured prominently as he prepares to return to his old stomping ground in the hooped shirt of Ireland’s history makers.
Irish football’s finest hour? Regardless of what ensues; whether Shamrock Rovers are beaten out the gate in each of their Europa League games, they have put the League of Ireland on the map. Paradoxically, the attention and goodwill flowing towards Rovers from the wider football world may be the route by which the Republic’s domestic game gains respect at home.
DESPITE the virtual collapse of full-time football here, Irish clubs may never have a better opportunity than now to make the European breakthrough. The draws for next season’s cup competitions have put the group stages of the Champions League and Europa League within sight of Ireland’s participants.
SO KENNY Dalglish is in the hot-seat at Anfield but, as the start he’s made has shown, the appointment of the club’s messiah to the top job hasn’t yielded instant results. Anyone who’s watched Liverpool regularly this campaign will tell you that not even the mystical powers of King Kenny are enough on their own to turn this wretched season around. So what does Kenny have to do in order to bring some respectability back to Anfield and ensure that he’s in with a fighting chance of nabbing the job long-term when decisions are made in the summer?
IT’S been a frustrating season for Liverpool. With new owners, and a manager moving perilously close to the edge, supporters of the Merseyside outfit are not quite sure what lies ahead, as Póg Mo Goal ponders….