The Republic of Ireland national football team represents Ireland in association football. It is governed by the Football Association of Ireland (FAI) and plays its home fixtures at the Aviva Stadium in Dublin. Its current manager is Giovanni Trapattoni.
The team made its debut at the 1924 Summer Olympics, reaching the quarter-finals. Between 1924 and 1936, the team competed as the Irish Free State and from then until 1950, it was referred to by the FAI as Éire or Ireland. In 1953, FIFA decreed that for competitive matches in tournaments that both Irish teams may enter, the FAI team would be officially called the Republic of Ireland while the IFA team was to be named Northern Ireland.
Under the guidance of Jack Charlton and his successor Mick McCarthy, the team enjoyed its most successful era, qualifying for UEFA Euro 1988 in their first appearance at the UEFA European Championship, reaching the quarterfinals of the 1990 FIFA World Cup in their first ever appearance at the finals, and making the last 16 at both the 1994 and 2002 FIFA World Cups. Under the guidance of Giovanni Trapattoni, the team narrowly lost out on qualification for the 2010 FIFA World Cup during a controversial play-off but went on to qualify for UEFA Euro 2012.
Ireland was the first nation from outside the United Kingdom to defeat England on home soil at a fixture played at Goodison Park, Liverpool, in 1949. The team also reached the quarter-finals of the 1964 European Nations' Cup.
Read more about Republic Of Ireland National Football Team: Media Coverage, Controversies, Kit, Competitive Record, Opponents, Recent Results and Forthcoming Fixtures, Individual All-time Records, Managers
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“...I’m not money hungry.... People who are rich want to be richer, but what’s the difference? You can’t take it with you. The toys get different, that’s all. The rich guys buy a football team, the poor guys buy a football. It’s all relative.”
—Martina Navratilova (b. 1956)
“While the Republic has already acquired a history world-wide, America is still unsettled and unexplored. Like the English in New Holland, we live only on the shores of a continent even yet, and hardly know where the rivers come from which float our navy.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“No people can more exactly interpret the inmost meaning of the present situation in Ireland than the American Negro. The scheme is simple. You knock a man down and then have him arrested for assault. You kill a man and then hang the corpse.”
—W.E.B. (William Edward Burghardt)
“Perhaps our national ambition to standardize ourselves has behind it the notion that democracy means standardization. But standardization is the surest way to destroy the initiative, to benumb the creative impulse above all else essential to the vitality and growth of democratic ideals.”
—Ida M. Tarbell (1857–1944)
“In football they measure forty-yard sprints. Nobody runs forty yards in basketball. Maybe you run the ninety-four feet of the court; then you stop, not on a dime, but on Miss Liberty’s torch. In football you run over somebody’s face.”
—Donald Hall (b. 1928)
“Is my team ploughing,
That I was used to drive
And hear the harness jingle
When I was man alive?”
—A.E. (Alfred Edward)