Above: Katie McCabe and Denise O’Sullivan after Ireland’s qualifier loss to Cymru. Photo: Ireland Football
by Alyce Collett (7/12/24)
This week saw absolute heartbreak for the Republic of Ireland women’s national team, who failed to navigate past Cymru and qualify for the 2025 Euros, much to the heartbreak of the players.
It is a real setback for a side that has made significant progress in the past few years, and after having qualified for last year’s World Cup, was hoping to make it two major tournaments in a row.
However, it was not to be and now the question of where to go from here lingers over all involved with the team.
Despite some tough results over the last 12 months for the Girls in Green, the scorelines do not always represent what goes on in their matches and how competitive they truly are. It is often just momentary lapses of concentration that bring them unstuck.
Despite this, they find themselves in a loop of being too powerful for League B in UEFA’s Nations League, but also unable to bank the results to stay up in League A.
No matter what happens moving forward, the Irish must break out of this loop and find a way to maintain their spot in League A. This is the only way that the momentum they have built over the past few years can be maintained and built on.
Narrowing in on the specifics, there are a few key areas that the Irish Federation and those that run the national team can focus on to get the team back on track, and back onto the path of growth.
Do not change the manager of the national team
This point is pretty self explanatory – make sure manager Eileen Gleeson’s contract gets renewed and that a long term deal is reached for her.
Yes her tenure so far has not quite delivered the results anyone would have wanted, but the picture is much bigger than that.
Towards the end of former manager Vera Pauw’s tenure, it was clear that the playing group was almost lifeless. Yes she got the team to its first ever major tournament, but her alleged tactics and coaching method meant that the joy and flare was not there. Fast forward to now, and Gleeson has not only maintained the solidness in defence that Pauw set up, but the team is now playing happier, more free flowing football and has attacking flare that Pauw never managed to get.
Not only has Gleeson got them playing better tactically, but changing managers again so soon after removing the last one just disrupts team flow and momentum. And with there being higher ranked national teams still needing to find a coach, there’s no guarantee the kind of high quality calibre needed would apply for a job like the Irish one, when they can apply to coach a team like Australia.
Do not be afraid to change the line-up and adapt to in-game situations
As much as Gleeson has really improved things on-field, there is one area that can still be improved.
Even before Gleeson took charge, there has been a bit of a reluctance to deviate from a set starting line up, and instead play others that may in fact be a better fit to how this team operates. Now that is less of an issue in defence and midfield, but is a bit of an issue in attack.
Ireland looks at its most dangerous with a pair of fast strikers, and although bringing in Julie-Ann Russell has been a massive boost, the persistence of playing Kyra Carusa as the other starting striker needs to be looked at. She does not have the speed and has not produced enough goals on a regular enough basis to warrant having that starting striker role.
It would be interesting to see what kind of impact partnering someone like a Leanne Kiernan or an Abbie Larkin with Russell would have.
Get more national team members playing in better competitions domestically
One thing that most if not all of the top teams in the world have in common is that all their players play in the best domestic competitions in the world, playing against the world’s best week in and week out. Not necessarily the domestic league of their home countries, but if you look at the likes of the United States, England, and even Australia, just about all of their regular first-choice players are playing in a league like England’s WSL or the USA’s NWSL.
Now contrast that with Ireland, where a large percentage of the squad plays in the Women’s Championship; the second division of the English system. Some play in the WSL and in the NWSL, but a large chunk of those regular starters are at a handful of Championship clubs. There used to be more in the WSL, and the promotion of Crystal Palace this season has helped, but a number moved clubs a few years ago, with several dropping down to the Championship.
Secure big friendlies against highly ranked teams
One of the most important things for this team to do moving forward is to secure big friendlies against higher-ranked teams.
Ireland’s relegation back to League B is not an insignificant setback, as it deprives the Girls in Green of the opportunities to play high-quality opponents that is necessary for the improvement of the team. The past precedence of the 2023 Nations League season combined with the current rankings of Ireland’s upcoming opponents, sets a scene of expected easy victories for the Irish and will not provide much of a guide as to where the team is truly at.
The last time Ireland was in League B, the Irish had no trouble accounting for Hungary, Northern Ireland and Albania, not dropping a point on their way to topping their group with a goal difference of positive 18. That goal difference was the best of any team across all four groups in League B.
This time the world number 24; Ireland are in a group with 40th ranked Slovenia, 58th placed Türkiye and world number 61 Greece.
With the way the UEFA Nations League works these days, there really are not a lot of windows of opportunity to make these friendlies happen, but there are opportunities there, like the back end of 2025. This assumes things go as expected and the Irish top their group in League B again.
Getting games against the likes of the USA and Australia may be difficult, but there are always teams like Canada, Brazil, and Japan.
Development of pathways within Ireland
The long term future of football in Ireland is just as important as the short term goals of making major tournaments.
The pathway system in Ireland is underfunded and underdeveloped, and needs to be redeveloped in order to keep up with those at the top of the world pecking order.
Now it is unclear what the FAI spends on its high performance programs as the annual reports do not specify, but the organisation’s financial issues have been well reported.
On a more practical sense, the pathway program is incomplete in Ireland. There are national teams up to under 19s, but Ireland does not have an under 23s national team, which the top countries do.
This has been a much talked about issue for some time. Most recently after this week’s game when Ruesha Littlejohn called it out in a post match chat with Irish broadcast network RTÉ, and it is not something the Federation can afford to ignore for much longer.
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