Finally, after 40 years of trying, Ireland can proudly say it now has a team representing it at the group stages of one of the most prestigious cup competitions in the world. Shamrock Rovers are the first Irish male team to qualify for the group stages of the very financially rewarding Europa League. They now will mix it with some of the best of European footballing clubs including Tottenham Hotspur, Rubin Kazan and PAOK of Greece.
League of Ireland fans, (for the most part) are happy for Shamrock Rovers. It shows the Airtricity League in a positive light, given all the negative publicity it has received in recent times. However, one has to ask the question. Will this result in increased attendances at league and cup domestic games?
Looking back on social media around the time that Shamrock Rovers defeated Partizan Belgrade in Serbia, the noise about the game was huge. People were jumping on the bandwagon so to speak and groups and fan pages were being set up every couple of minutes. The scorer of the wonder goal which leveled the game and sent it to extra-time, Patrick Sullivan, had received over 400 friend requests on Facebook and was also trending on Twitter. Dara o'Brian even mentioned him in one of his tweets. One must ask the question, would he have received the same spotlight had he not scored the equalising goal? Unfortunately the answer is probably not.
Irish footballers are not seen in the same light as footballers from countries such as England, Spain and Italy. Games do not receive the same media coverage in Ireland as they should and as a result, The league has struggled, and to an extent still struggles to move forward and progress. Actions speak louder than words and in this case Shamrock Rovers qualifying for the group stages of the Europa League should be a call to action. Everybody who commented on social media or joined a group saying how fantastic an achievement it was should get up and go support their local club. If they put the effort in revenue will be generated and as a result that money can be fed back into the other clubs in the league and who knows? maybe Irish clubs qualifying for the top European competitions will become a regular occurrence.
I think it's unfortunate that Irish teams do not appear to receive the recognition they obviously deserve. However, I have to hold my hands up the fact to say that I would be one of the first to criticise were we to start paying the big bucks to these 'professionals'. Ireland simply do not have the resources to do so and shouldn't feel under any pressure from bigger soccer nations to do so.
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