Our game has regressed and I blame Delaney for that – Brady

IF John Delaney believes he can iron out the Republic of Ireland’s woes and buy himself time by merely replacing one high-profile managerial ticket, Martin O’Neill-Roy Keane, with another, Mick McCarthy-Robbie Keane, he’s mistaken.

Senior respected figures in Irish football are pointing fingers at the FAI’s governance, on Delaney’s lengthy watch as chief executive, as a contributory cause of the dearth of quality footballers coming through to bolster the senior ranks.

Liam Brady, a graduate of the Dublin schoolboy scene in the early 1970s and one of Ireland’s all-time greats, cares deeply about Irish football. Right now, he is fearful for the present, and for the future.

‘What worries me above anything else is the lack of players we have coming through,’ he said on RTÉ yesterday. ‘Whatever has gone on hasn’t worked.

‘We’re not seeing the talent that we once had in the years gone past. The likes of Damien Duff, Robbie Keane, Richard Dunne and Shay Given — all top-class players. We haven’t replaced them with anybody of the same quality.

‘There has to be a reason for that and I don’t think the employment of the two Dutch gentlemen [Wim Koevermans and Ruud Dokter as FAI High Performance Directors] over the last ten or twelve years has worked.

‘I don’t really understand why someone like Brian Kerr is not involved in youth development when he had such an unbelievable track record in it.

‘Then we go and look at the board of the FAI who are responsible for the game in the country and there’s nobody from the professional game. There’s nobody who has played football professionally either in England or international level, there’s just no representation and that can’t be right.’

As ever, Brady makes a valid point. On the shortage of players, consider where Ireland were at Euro 88, the first breakthrough to a major tournament. Jack Charlton’s squad contained three players from English champions Liverpool, three from runners-up Manchester United and three from Scottish kingpins Celtic.

By 2002, when Mick McCarthy took Ireland to the World Cup finals, 17 (74%) of his 23 players were from the Premier League.

At Euro 2012, Giovanni Trapattoni brought 16 (70%) Premier League players, as well as Aiden McGeady (Spartak Moscow), Robbie Keane (LA Galaxy) and Darren O’Dea (Celtic) to Poland. Only four of Trapattoni’s squad were with Championship clubs.

Even O’Neill had decent tools to work with at the finals of Euro 2016, with 12 (52%) out of 23 players from the Premier League, 10 from the Championship and an ageing Keane at Galaxy.

Crucially of those 12, Shay Given, John O’Shea and Wes Hoolahan have since retired, while Glenn Whelan was surplus to O’Neill’s needs for the past year.

Scroll forward to the nil-all draw against Northern Ireland last Thursday, which effectively sabotaged the O’Neill-Keane axis.

That starting XI included just four Premier League players, while a League One player, Ronan Curtis, came on at half-time for his debut. Of the other five Irish subs, four play outside the Premier League.

Watching the action unfold in Aarhus four days later was Delaney and the majority of the FAI’s board of directors, effectively Delaney’s bosses.

Along with Delaney, they were never paid to play, paid to coach or paid to pick a professinal football team, yet these are the most important figures in Irish football, who have approved the hiring of Koevermans (2008) and Dokter (2013) to find talent, nurture it, and provide a pathway to the senior team.

The directors also have the authority to appoint or remove an Ireland senior manager, but Brady doubts that is the case and says Delaney calls the shots.

‘He [Delaney] is the man making these calls,’ said Brady, who was assistant manager under Trapattoni.

‘I think everyone pretty much knows that John Delaney is in total control there, and he’s the one making the calls. ‘We’ve had 15 years of John, since 2003, and I think the only progress that has really happened is that John’s career has gone up and up.

‘He is a member of the Executive Committee (of UEFA), but if you look at the Ireland situation, I think we’ve regressed

badly.’