Niall Quinn was fired up on Tuesday night.
And so was Brian Kerr beside him.
They’re both sick and tired of watching good, young Irish players fall away from the game because there’s no place for them in Ireland to prosper and to grow. They’re both sick and tired of watching the League of Ireland itself dwindle away when there are so many opportunities for it to improve and develop.
They both have the best interests of Irish football at heart.
First things first, for Irish football to make any progress the League of Ireland and its players need to get the respect and the chances it and they deserve.
“It’s about producing younger players,” he began.
How do we do that? We give them hope and we give them enthusiasm that if they make it here in Ireland in the League of Ireland, well then they’ve a proper chance of making it onto the national team without having to risk everything by rushing over to England when they’re not ready for it or when they don’t want to do it.
“We have got to give the League of Ireland its due respect and have our players here have an ambition to have a pathway through the League of Ireland into the Irish set-up and not to run away on a boat to have a career over and done with before you’ve even grown into a man.”
"We have got to give the League of Ireland its due respect and have our players here and have an ambition to have a pathway through the #LOI into the Irish set-up."
– Niall Quinn. #VMSport pic.twitter.com/4tB9xO8mVC
— Virgin Media Sport (@VMSportIE) November 27, 2018
The second point he makes is inter-linked.
The quandary that is the League of Ireland needs be sorted out.
“We need better pathways at all levels of the game…We need to try and figure out what are the best routes to try and figure out how to bring investment to the bottom of the game. The League needs to find out how to do what every other league in the world does – promotes itself, markets itself, brings in money from all over the world if it can.”
The League of Ireland needs to become bigger, it needs to become better and he feels for it make those improvements, the FAI can’t have anything to do with it.
“It can’t survive owned by the FAI, or even half-owned by the FAI.”
Quinn reckons the League should be privately owned by a group of people who have a head office in Dublin. He would even work there himself, only so long as the FAI isn’t involved.
“For the League yes, not the FAI…Too much politics there for me.”
Niall Quinn believes the League of Ireland needs to step away from the FAI and set-up it's own office.
Would he be tempted to work in it?
"For the League yes, but not for the FAI, too much politics there for me."#VMSport pic.twitter.com/OLxVHpdzas
— Virgin Media Sport (@VMSportIE) November 27, 2018
That’s the way things should be.
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