by Alan Browne admitted that the Republic of Ireland lacked a “world-class personality” to lead them back to the promised land of international football.
A poor start to the Nations League under new head coach Heimir Hallgrimsson has left fans disappointed, remembering the days when players such as Paul McGrath, Ray Houghton, Roy Keane, Shay Given and Robbie Keane played in teams that repeatedly qualified for major tournaments.
This has been lost on the youngest generation of Irish players – they have not made the finals of a major competition since Euro 2016 – and Tuesday night’s 2-0 home defeat to Greece suggests this is unlikely to change any time soon, even with away games in Finland and Greece looming next month.
Former Irish defender Gary Breen, who works as a TV pundit, expressed the view that the current team lacks leaders. However, when asked about his opinion, Sunderland midfielder Browne said: “No, I think there are quite a few leaders there.”
“I think there are quite a few players who have been captain of their club or their country. If you look at the team, there are quite a few.
“We probably don’t have that presence, that player with Premier League quality who stands out from the rest, like we might have had in previous years.
“The boys are playing in the Premier League and doing quite well, but we are missing the world-class player that everyone is looking at and who everyone thinks will bring us victory.
“I know Evan (Ferguson) obviously has a bright future but it’s a big burden on him because he’s so young. And at the moment he hasn’t played much football. Yeah, he probably lacks that presence more than leadership.”
Brighton striker Ferguson, 19, is widely regarded as Ireland’s most promising talent, but when he met up with his international teammates last week he had not played a game since March due to an angry ankle injury.
He only played a few minutes as a substitute in the 2-0 defeats to England and Greece at the Aviva Stadium. While Hallgrimsson and his teammates hope his day will come, it can’t come soon enough.
Losing has apparently become a habit for a team that won only six of its 29 games under its previous head coach Stephen Kenny and, in its last ten competitive matches, its only victories were against Gibraltar, along with eight defeats.
Their latest defeat came after a promising start, with second-half goals from Fotis Ioannidis and Christos Tzolis destroying any momentum they had built up.
Browne, 29, said: “It doesn’t matter how well or how badly you play. The most important thing is the results. That’s what we have to get used to.”
“Whatever it looks like, we have to win games. We haven’t done that for a long time. We haven’t fought for results, we haven’t dominated games and got results. No matter how we played and how it looked, we always ended up more or less on the losing side.”
