"It's not about football": Ireland, Israel and a game that can't be won
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Why has the Ireland vs Israel Nations League match become a political flashpoint?
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Given United are going to dominate most of their games, and that's what they want to do, given they want to be winning titles and challenging, they can't really be a team who adapt from game to game. They've got to have a kind of a model or an idea. And that's something that they don't seem to have an attack right now. It's a little bit like they're not executing some of the best practice over the last 10 years of football tactics.
This is an Irish Independent
Podcast. 227 days. That's the length of time that will have passed between the announcement of the Republic of Ireland versus Israel in the UEFA Nations League and the first time a ball is kicked in what has turned into so much more than a mere contentious sporting fixture. You may well be sick and tired of hearing about it. You might not even tune in for the purposely scaled-back TV broadcast. But despite seven months of debate, argument, protests and ever-increasing tension...
There's credible allegations and mounting evidence that one of the countries involved in this match are engaged in genocide, ethnic cleansing, forced starvation, like the worst crimes that exist. Do the Irish team really want to be playing with people who are directly involved with the outfit that are committing genocide and crimes against humanity and normalising those people as if it's just any other game?
The game has not been stopped and is indeed set to go ahead.
The whistle is going to blow on Sunday and Ireland are going to play Israel and I think it's almost easy to forget that there's actually a football match, two football matches at the end of all of this. the football aspect to it is secondary. So, yeah, it's not about football this week, really, but obviously football is the vehicle for which, you know, it has allowed this sort of extraordinary event, I suppose, to take place.
I'm Tessa Fleming, and today on the IndoDaily, I'm joined by the Irish independent soccer correspondent, Dan MacDonald, and multimedia reporter, Dara Nolan, to discuss one of the most hot-button issues in Ireland's recent history.
Dan, Ireland are away to Kosovo tonight in their first game in the Nations League. But of course, that's not the game that everyone is talking about. The game that everyone is talking about is Ireland v. Israel, which takes place, the first game takes place this Sunday in Hungary with the second game on October 4th in Serbia. From your point of view, Dan, are these games about more than just football?
Yeah, like to me, the significance of these games now is that they're sort of an event in history, I feel. And sometimes these things don't, you don't realise it in the moment. Sometimes you realise it down the line. It's like people talk about the times the Irish rugby team played apartheid in South Africa and they're sort of infamous games now when people look back with the passing of time. The government, the church and the unions have also issued long statements and all of them have been against the tour going ahead. The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Brian Lenehan, said the government condemns a regime which has tried to build a political system on the basis of racial discrimination. I guess these games are going to be seen in a similar light, except maybe, and look, you look through the archives of that time, there was coverage, but maybe not on the scale of what we're talking about now, that probably in real time, people realise that these are games that are quite likely in the passing of time to be sort of looked back on with a degree of infamy.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
Why has the Ireland vs Israel Nations League match become a political flashpoint?
0:00–8:19
2
How did the initial draw and early reactions set the stage for months of protest?
8:19–15:20
3
What tactics are protesters using to pressure the Irish squad before the game?
15:20–21:28
4
Are the Irish players caught in a lose‑lose dilemma between sport and conscience?
21:28–27:28
5
How is the FAI handling the controversy and what criticism have they faced?
27:28–29:24
Speakers
4 identifiedMore from The Indo Daily
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