By Garry Doyle

Copyright irishmirror

Former Ireland boss Brian Kerr has rallied against the discrimination soccer faces in this country.

While the sport does receive funding via sports capital grants, the reality is that a huge, one-off spend is needed to improve the infrastructure at League of Ireland academies in order to stop the slide the national team is on.

Without investment in coaches and football grounds, League of Ireland academies will continue to struggle in comparison to the facilities provided by English and other European leagues.

While many sceptics believe the taxpayer shouldn’t have to deal with the burden of helping the ailing sport, Kerr has a different view.

And he compared the government spend on preparing Adare for the 2027 Ryder Cup with the cheapskate attitude politicians have towards funding an Irish football revolution.

Speaking on Off the Ball, Kerr said: “It annoyed me the other day when I was reading about the golf. The Ryder Cup is going to happen in Adare Manor.

“They were talking about how they needed another E20-30m for the road to bypass Adare.

“The golf (tournament) is only going to be on for a few days where as international football is going to be on until kingdom come.

“The wellbeing, the morale of the people of Ireland who love football is going to be there for a long, long time after the Ryder Cup is played in Ireland.

“With all due respect to it, golf is a very elitist game.

“I have bashed a ball around pitch and putt courses but I never had time nor the money to go and play golf. Loads of my mates are like that.

“So, while I was delighted when Rory (McIlroy) won the Irish Open, the reality is that it is a sport that is only (serving) a certain number of people in the country. Football is for everyone.

“You only need the ball and a few coats to get the game going.

“But you need an awful lot more (money) to survive at the top level. That is why we are losing to Luxembourg and Armenia.”

As the senior men’s national team continues to flounder, Kerr can see where the problem lies.

When his youth teams were in their pomp, he was able to call on teenage whiz-kids who were shining in the top tiers of English football, Robbie Keane excelling for Wolves as a 17-year-old, Damien Duff breaking through at Blackburn, Richard Dunne doing the same thing at Everton.

With Ireland they tasted glory, Duff winning a bronze medal at the 1997 World Under 20 Cup; Keane and Dunne winning the Under 18 European Championships a year later, a couple of months after John O’Shea had helped Ireland’s Under 16s win the Euros at that age-grade.

But back then English clubs did Irish football’s job for them, bringing young players across the water and polishing them from raw diamonds into the finished article.

Post Brexit, though, Ireland’s best young players are unable to leave these shores until their 18th birthday and the reality is that while the academies here have good coaches, they don’t have good facilities.

Kerr said: “If you take up where Mason Melia is (playing) right now, where Cathal O’Sullivan is (playing), where Michael Noonan is.

“They are doing very well as 16 and 17 year olds.

“Robbie Keane was playing in our youth international team and was in the first team for Wolves (at the same time). He was nearly top scorer for them in his first season.

“Damien Duff was playing first team football for Blackburn at 17; Richard Dunne doing the same for Everton just as Stephen McPhail was doing for Leeds.

“We had Liam George and Gary Doherty at Luton. There were lists of them (playing first team football).

“Now we are celebrating the fact we have a few players playing in the first team and scoring a few goals at Cork, Pat’s, Shamrock Rovers, Drogheda.

“But 20-odd years ago we had (teenage) players playing first team football in the Premier League and what is now the Championship.

“That is where we have fallen back.

“Those lads (Noonan, Melia, O’Sullivan) would have gone to England. Would they have been in the first team? Maybe not, maybe near it, maybe in the first team squad.

“It is hard to measure different times.

“But there is a massive task at the moment to get to those levels. What every League of Ireland club is doing is their best. But they are hamstrung because it is starting too late, the resources they have, there is a negativity towards resourcing football in some ways.”