Clubs on the up as national side slips down list

On Soccer: Long the poor relations of the national team in terms of public perception, eircom League clubs might well be more highly ranked in Europe than Steve Staunton's men within a year unless the Republic's new manager manages to halt his side's slide on Fifa's ladder.

While Derry City's defeat in Paris last week put an end to Ireland's involvement with the Uefa club competitions for this season, the wins over Gothenburg and Gretna, as well as the first-leg draw with PSG, have underlined the dramatic progress being made by the league's clubs in international competition.

Ranked well outside the top 40 of 52 countries just a couple of seasons back, Ireland's club scene is provisionally 35th in the Uefa list now. And because the placing is based on performances over five seasons, the scale of the improvement is considerably understated.

Points are awarded for wins and draws achieved by each club in each European competition, and an average score is taken for the five years. Irish clubs were actually 27th in Europe last year, with an average of 1.833 ranking points, and having picked up an average of 2.833 this season they could sneak into the Continent's top-20 when the final list is drawn up at the end of the season.

Helped by the advent of summer soccer, increased numbers of full-time professionals and hugely improved preparations, their scores now have improved year on year for each of the last five seasons. But the first two of the five currently counted remain poor, so, barring some sort of relapse, it will be another couple of years before the country's ranking catches up with the performances being turned in by the clubs.

Already this season, though, the Irish have done collectively better than the clubs representing countries like Norway, Croatia, Hungary, Sweden and Cyprus - all traditionally way ahead of Ireland in terms of their success in Uefa competitions, and all still ranked well ahead of the Republic on the basis of their superior showings in previous seasons.

In the immediate future, the prospects of maintaining the improvement are bright, as at least two of Ireland's representatives - Derry City and Shelbourne - should be seeded in their first-round draws next season if, as looks likely, they take the top spots in the league this year.

On the face of it, though, there is some concern that the winners of this year's FAI Cup (or runners-up, in the event Derry do the double) could struggle to match the results achieved by the bigger teams over the last few seasons, thus putting additional pressure on the other clubs to do well.

Still, this was the first year all three participating clubs picked up points, and the league is, in any case, some way off having anything of huge significance to lose in the event of a temporary setback, unlike Scotland, which is likely to be stripped of its second Champions League spot in two seasons because Gretna - runners-up to Hearts in the cup last season - fared so badly against Derry City.

If the present momentum is maintained, then a consistent place in Europe's top-25 looks achievable in a couple of years, although the results achieved by Shelbourne, Cork City and Derry against the likes of Steaua Bucharest, Red Star Belgrade and PSG respectively show how hard it will be for any Irish team to take the next great leap forward.

As we have seen, the gulf in quality between European teams of that sort of calibre and the best sides here remains huge.

Given the disparity in budgets - Pauleta was reported to earn considerably more in a year from PSG than the whole Derry squad - that's hardly surprising, and it seems that if a League of Ireland side really are to make the group stages of either European competition over the next few seasons they will, as Stephen Kenny suggested in the wake of last week's defeat at the Parc des Princes, have to benefit from a favourable draw followed by a below-par performance by their opponents.

For all of that, though, the reality is that Irish clubs have finally started to emerge with pride from their European outings, and, given their financial restrictions, to be ranked in the top half of the Continent's leagues would be a significant achievement.

It may be achieved, however, just as the national team - 24th out of 52 on the Continent if the Fifa world ranking list is to be taken as an accurate indicator - continues its slide in the opposite direction.

The Republic is reckoned to be 43rd in the world, its lowest placing since January 1999 and uncomfortably close to its status in November of 1998 when it briefly dipped to 57th on the list. In truth, the team probably never deserved to be that low, just as its status as the sixth best side on the planet back in August 1993 was a little ridiculous.

Just as the statistics reflect a widely held belief that the league's best teams are getting better, though, so the national team's slippage ithe world rankings is in tune with the popular perception that this is a team in decline.

The hope is that good results against Cyprus and the Czechs will help Staunton's men turn the corner. The fear must be, however, that things on the international front have the potential to get a good deal worse before they start to get better again.