Jason McAteer on the best player he’s played with and who Ireland's next superstar could be

As the countdown to the World Cup draws ever nearer, former Republic of Ireland and Liverpool defender Jason McAteer spoke about why the quality of Irish football has diminished, how young Irish players do not get the opportunity to thrive and why Liverpool’s Caoimhin Kelleher has the potential to be world class. 

Capped 52 times by his country, the former Ireland international, who appeared in two World Cups, also takes a trip down memory lane. He reflects on his own experiences at the 2002 tournament and how Paul McGrath marking Roberto Baggio out of the game at USA ‘94 makes the former Aston Villa and Manchester United man the best he’s played with. 

Irish football is failing because the money is not there to invest

The world has changed, it's a very small place now and you can go anywhere and do anything very quickly. Not just in life but in football as well. If you go back into the 90s, and the 80s, football scouts would venture out as far as Europe. They'd never go to Uruguay, Brazil and Argentina, and the development of football has changed through the years. Irish football has always had a very strong bond with the English Football Association and the football team. Scouts would venture out as well and then they’d bring the Irish players back from a young age, develop them and they'd end up in their respective first teams.

English football was full of Northern Irish and Scottish players, such as George Best and Kenny Dalglish, and then you look through all the Irish players such as Ronnie Whelan and Paul McGrath too. Football clubs can venture abroad now and bring in 10 Spaniards, five Italians and six players from places such as Brazil, Peru, Australia and America if they want. Therefore, the pond gets small and the opportunity then becomes a lot smaller. 

I would certainly say Ireland fell behind from a grassroots point of view. But that also comes from an economic point of view as well. The money's not there to invest into that because of the economy and the fact that Ireland are not qualifying. 

Irish players are not getting the same opportunities

It's a slow downward tear on everything and you're left with a lack of talent coming through. Your pool is very small. They're not going to get that opportunity. So a lot of the Irish players now don't play in the Premier League. There are obviously exceptions, but certainly not 20 players like when I played for Ireland. The 25 players that were playing for Ireland at that World Cup, were all playing for top teams really: Manchester United, Tottenham, Aston Villa, Liverpool, Everton. Some are playing in Scotland for Celtic and Rangers. It's just been a slow demise. The quality has declined and it's just been very, very difficult.

Ireland are too inconsistent to qualify for tournaments

How do they qualify? We need to bring Paul McGrath and John Aldridge out of retirement!

When you look at the finances of the FAI, you know what to attract. They've decided to appoint a manager that they think can bring his experience from youth team football, and maybe his knowledge of whatever that may be into a first national team. They've been given the opportunity to change the scene around to go through a transitional period, bringing young players, and they’ve been given the time to lose games, gain experience and come together as a squad.

Some of these results have been okay. There was the 2-2 draw against Belgium, they beat Qatar 4-0 but then they go and lose to Azerbaijan. So there's inconsistency there. It's okay beating Qatar and putting a couple of draws together but you've got to start beating or taking points in qualifying games against the big nations such as Portugal, France, Germany and Denmark. I just certainly don't see Ireland with that capacity at the minute. I don't think the play is good enough and I don't think that the infrastructure is good enough to do that. 

Perhaps they’re waiting for a couple of players to come through to have higher quality, to try and get them together into a national team and attract players. You've got to exploit everything when you're a team like Ireland, you have to try and exploit that. People want to play for one of the teams that are going to qualify for tournaments. So again, it's fairly difficult because they're a long way away from doing that. So sometimes you just have to accept that that's where we are right now. It's going to be a long process.

Why Ireland do not produce players like Damien Duff, Robbie Keane and Shay Given

Irish players don't get opportunities like they used to. For example, Caoimhin Kelleher is a fantastic goalkeeper for Liverpool and for the Republic of Ireland. He’s Liverpool's number two and in front of him is the world's number one. But he’s never going to play! So he doesn't get that consistency of playing football week in week out and you don't know what you're going to get with some of his performances. 

Can you throw him into the Ireland team? Of course you can throw him into the Ireland team, but what is his quality going to be like? I don't know if Liverpool have many other Irish kids coming through. It’s the same with Manchester City. At the big Premier League teams, they just don't get that opportunity. Like I said, they work their way down the divisions and end up in League One or Two, and sprinkle into the Championship. So you put them all together for a national team, but then you've got to go against the quality of the bigger nations and they just can't find that consistency and quality. 

Ireland’s legends came through a different system

I don't know how you find the Damien Duff's and the Robbie Keane's because they came through a completely different system. They came across as kids to Tottenham and Blackburn and came through to the Premier League and got themselves into the first team because they were given the opportunities. This is because managers didn't have the budgets to go and spend £70million on a striker from Brazil, Uruguay or Argentina. 

Look at the German leagues and the Spanish leagues. The Premier League will go into those leagues and they'll take all their best players, so they rebuild all the time. What they do is they produce academy players who get into the first teams. Jude Bellingham went to Borussia Dortmund because he got the opportunity, he wasn’t going to get that opportunity in England, so he went to Germany because the opportunities are there to play at a young age in a domestic league, such as the Bundesliga. 

The Irish players used to get that opportunity in England through the 90s, but now they don't have that opportunity now. 

Paul McGrath was the best player I played with

Paul McGrath is probably the best I played with. With what we know now about mental health and injuries, I look back on Paul’s career and have no idea how he actually played the game, and the level he played at was just phenomenal. Then we got to the World Cup in 1994 and he came up against Roberto Baggio who was arguably the best striker in the world. It was one of the best centre-half displays I've ever seen in my life. 

It was just phenomenal. But he was an absolute gentleman off the pitch, and obviously had a lot of problems, but his performances under the extreme circumstances he was in were just phenomenal. I'd have to say Paul McGrath was probably one of the greatest players I ever played with. I was privileged to play with him.

Caoimhin Kelleher could be Ireland’s next superstar

Stephen Kenny has put together a team of experience and youth at the minute. Josh Cullen’s a good player and so is John Egan, but Seamus Coleman is coming to the end now. So is Shane Duffy. I would probably say Caoimhin Kelleher at Liverpool is our next superstar. I think he could walk into most Premier League teams. For me, he's got the potential to be world-class. How he gets to that level, I'm not sure because he needs to play more. 

To represent the country and sing the national anthem before you go out and play is the best thing you can do as a sportsman

Playing for your country at a World Cup is the greatest honour you could ever have as a footballer. I was involved in an Irish setup which was extremely successful in the 1990 World Cup, when we got to the quarterfinals in Italy. We then qualified in ‘94. The squad was ageing, so we were like the injection of youth. That was myself, Gary Kelly and Phil Babb. So to get on the back end of that was just phenomenal. You want to do it again. Then we got the opportunity in 2002. I was older and the circumstances were different as we lost our captain. But to represent the country and sing the national anthem before you go out and play is just the proudest thing you can do as a sportsman.

It was disappointing to lose against Spain in 2002 - these were games we felt we could win

I was talking about it recently. That was Spain’s transitional period - which is what led to the fantastic 2010 Euros team and the World Cup team. They were very much there for the taking. We were brilliant on the day. I think we missed the penalty in normal time as well, which could have changed the direction of things. Before the game we were actually plotting our way through to the semi-final. I think we had Germany and South Korea as well. These were games we felt we could actually win. So to lose the game was very, very disappointing because we felt we could have gone a lot further in the competition. 

We were gaining momentum, we had this unity. Our captain (Roy Keane) had gone which produced a close bond. We drew with Germany, beat Saudi Arabia and drew with Cameroon. It was very disappointing to lose the game. To this day we often talk about what might have been. 

Jason McAteer was talking with LVBET as they launch their Fantasy Mundial 2022 competition where you can play for free and make predictions with a chance to share a prize pool of €22,000! To play go to LVBet.com