Football Association of Ireland

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Football Association of Ireland
Cumann Peile na hÉireann
logo
founding 1921
FIFA accession 1923
UEFA accession 1958
president Paddy McCaul
Secretary General John Delaney
National teams Men's
national team
U-23 , U-21 , U-20 , U-19,
U-18 , U-17 , U-16 , U-15
women's
national team
U-19 , U-17 , U-15
Homepage www.fai.ie

The Football Association of Ireland (FAI, Irish : Cumann Peile na hÉireann ) is the football association in the Republic of Ireland . It was founded in Dublin in 1921 . The FAI organizes, among other things, the men's and women's national teams , the Irish Cup and League Cups and, since the merger with the Football League of Ireland, the two professional leagues . Together with the Northern Irish IFA , the FAI organized the cross-border all-Irish cup competition Setanta Sports Cup from 2005 to 2014 .

history

Separation and start-up

After the partition of Ireland , the three Dublin-based clubs broke from the all-Ireland Irish Football League . However, they initially stayed in the Irish Football Association , which was based in Belfast , and also played in the cup competition. After the IFA in April 1921 did not want to play the replay in the Irish Cup semi-finals between defending champions Shelbourne (from Dublin) and Glenavon (from Lurgan), contrary to custom, not in Dublin but in Belfast, the ties were finally torn. Shelbourne did not take part and decided not to participate.

Territories since 1923: 26 counties in Southern Ireland (FAI / FAIFS), six counties in Northern Ireland (IFA)

In June 1921, representatives of clubs and regional associations met in Dublin and founded the Football League of Ireland , which initially began playing with eight clubs from the capital. Three months later, the Football League and the regional associations from Leinster and Munster founded the FAI as the football association for Southern Ireland . A separate cup competition was launched, which was named after the establishment of the Irish Free State Cup . League and Cup were won by St. James's Gate FC in their first year .

From Northern Ireland joined the Falls League , a league from the Catholic-Republican west of Belfast, the FAI; the club Alton United from this league even won the FAI Cup in 1923 . This connection across the border ended when the FAI joined FIFA. In order to join the World Football Association , it had to change its name to the Football Association of the Irish Free State (FAIFS) and limit itself to jurisdiction over the 26 counties within the Free State. (This restriction still applies today - with one exception: since 1985, the Northern Irish club Derry City has been allowed to participate in matches in the republic thanks to a special regulation between FIFA, IFA and FAI.)

National team in the Free State

As early as 1924, a selection of FAI players took part in the Olympic football tournament as the Irish Free State team. On May 28, 1924 there was the first international match in the Olympic Stadium in Colombes , the Irish defeated Bulgaria 1-0. They qualified for the quarterfinals, which they lost 2-1 after extra time against the Netherlands . The next day they won a friendly against Estonia . In records from that time, including in the FAI documents, the games are counted as regular international matches, even though they were purely amateur teams. After the 1960s they were re-classified as amateur international games; however, in 1999, FIFA declared that international matches in early Olympic competitions could also count as full internationals. The first international match organized by FAIFS took place in March 1926; in Turin the team lost 3-0 to Italy . In April 1927 the first home game followed in Dublin, also against Italy. 20,000 spectators watched the 2-1 defeat on Lansdowne Road .

Both associations, IFA and FAI / FAIFS, claimed for themselves to represent the whole island. In the following years there were several attempts to bring both associations together, but they failed because of discrepancies about which association should play the leading role. While the FAIFS refrained from calling players from Northern Ireland to their national team, the IFA did not hold back in this regard and used players from the Free State in their internationals. In 1936, the FAIFS adopted its old name Football Association of Ireland in the run-up to the renaming of the state in "Republic of Ireland" . With reference to the constitution of the republic, the FAI recruited players from the north for the Irish national team. In total there were at least 38 players who played in both the FAI national team and the IFA selection . However, the FAI abandoned this practice after the IFA rejoined FIFA in 1946; the north called players from the republic into its team until 1950.

1950s to 1980s

For many years the popularity of football was limited to Dublin and a few cities in the provinces. In some areas soccer was viewed as the game of the English and dismissed as a "garrison game" as teams of the British Army often brought it to the cities. Little football was played in schools either; Rugby , Gaelic football, and similar ball sports were more popular. The Gaelic Athletic Association even banned members who played "foreign" sports until 1971. It was not until the late 1960s that football began to take hold here as well.

The national team could not show any great success until the mid-1980s. In qualifying for European Championship or World Cup tournaments, she regularly failed, even if only barely. In the qualification for the European Championship 1980 there was for the first time a direct comparison of the teams of the two Irish associations; there was, accompanied by fan riots in Dublin on the day of the match, a 0-0 in Dalymount Park ; Northern Ireland won 1-0 in the second leg.

Greater popularity through international success

It was only after the English old international Jack Charlton took over the national team as team manager in 1986 that success set in. Ireland qualified for the European Championship in Germany in 1988 , only losing to the eventual European champions Netherlands and leaving England behind in the group games . At the 1990 World Cup in Italy, “Jack's Heroes” were only eliminated from the hosts in the quarter-finals. In the USA in 1994 , the team also survived the group stage.

With the international success of the national team since the 1980s, football received more media and, in particular, television presence and thus more fans and more money for the FAI. The association drew attention to itself through good youth work - in 1997 the U-20 national team finished third in the World Cup, in 1998 the U-16 and U-18 teams of the Irish became European champions in their age group. In addition to the professional competitions, there is now a U-21 league, as well as a Junior Cup and an Intermediate Cup for clubs that do not play in the League of Ireland . The FAI also organizes football competitions in schools.

UEFA five-year ranking

Placement in the UEFA five-year ranking ( previous year's ranking in brackets ). The abbreviations CL and EL after the country coefficients indicate the number of representatives in the 2019/20 season of the Champions League and the Europa League .

Status: end of the European Cup season 2018/19

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ "Article 2: The national territory consists of the whole island of Ireland, its islands and the territorial seas." ("Article 2: The national territory consists of the entire island of Ireland, its islands and the territorial waters."), Wording of the Constitution of the Republic of Ireland from 1937 to 1999, cf. Ireland - Constitution at International Constitutional Law and Articles 2 and 3 of the Constitution of Ireland
  2. ^ Sean Ryan, The Boys in Green: the FAI International Story , Mainstream Publishing, Edinburgh 1997, ISBN 1-85158-939-2 ; P. 33
  3. ↑ List of national players who played for both associations
  4. ^ Sean Ryan, The Boys in Green: the FAI International Story , Mainstream Publishing, Edinburgh 1997, ISBN 1-85158-939-2 ; P. 61
  5. ↑ UEFA rankings for club competitions. In: UEFA. Retrieved July 14, 2019 .