Christ almighty.
Well over three hours before Ireland kicked off their final Group E game against Italy, RTÉ pundit Eamon Dunphy set a sombre tone.
Football as we know it, he declared, is dead. Brown bread. Toast.
Toasted brown bread.
The former Ireland international harked back to bygone days – the days of John Giles and Liam Brady – before declaring that modern life is not worth the horse it rode in on.
Managers today, he lamented, are under so much pressure that they cannot even afford to give a player a season to prove himself. As for Ireland… goosed. He said:
“In terms of the game in this country, it’s dead. There’s no players coming through; no-one. Not one. No-one… that we know of.
“Football as we know it, or as we have known throughout our lives, is dead.
“No players are coming through that are good enough to play at international level, even to play in the Premier League and maybe to play in the Championship. There are no players coming through right now to replace the ones that are there.”
Ireland’s youth have been driven indoors and we are suffering as a consequence, Dunphy argued.
https://twitter.com/stephenmeehan32/status/745641448624787456
Dunphy cited the fact that Glenn Whelan, 32, currently has no up-and-coming midfielders pressing for his spot. He mentioned the ‘lad at Peterborough’ [Chris Forrester] but does not believe he is the finished product yet. He continued:
“The game is dying everywhere because it’s not played on the streets anymore… There is no-one with that cunning, that guile that great street players have.”
That’s right, powerhouses like Germany and Italy [no more Pirlos] are goners too.
As for Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland, tough luck.
