Ireland Ramblings – It’s All Happening

Not really. There really isn’t much going on after the mind-boggling fun of Paddy’s Day…But I have seen a few things that are of minor interest, and at least give me an excuse to post something.

Firstly, our lovely Italian manager Giovanni Trapattoni turned 70 on St. Patrick’s Day. Quite fitting that our manager’s birthday is on our national day. I’d like to say that my drinking on Paddy’s Day was in celebration of Trap’s big day but I cannot lie to you, I just wanted beer.

The next thing on the agenda is that the FAI have announced a new 10-year commercial partnership agreement with Umbro. Umbro will pump €24.5M into the FAI over the 10-year period, starting in August 2010 but that fee may rise. In keeping with the theme of jerseys and sponsorship, Umbro have also released Ireland’s new away kit and goalkeeping kit.

Here are two of our less handsome players modelling the kits…

Finally, Trap has announced his preliminary squads for the World Cup 2010 qualifiers against Bulgaria and Italy, on March 28 and April 1 respectively.

Here’s the squad;

Goalkeepers: Shay Given, Dean Kiely, Kieren Westwood

Defenders: Alex Bruce, Damien Delaney, John O’Shea, Kevin Foley, Paul McShane, Richard Dunne, Stephen Kelly, Stephen Finnan, Kevin Kilbane & Darren O’Dea.

Midfielders: Aiden McGeady, Damien Duff, Darron Gibson, Glenn Whelan, Keith Andrews, Liam Miller, Stephen Hunt & Andy Keogh.

Forwards: Caleb Folan, Kevin Doyle, Robbie Keane, Shane Long & Noel Hunt.

These games are absolutely huge and really do hold the key to our qualification. If we can get a win against Bulgaria at Croker on March 28 it will really set us up well for the trip to Bari. I’m confident we’ll win against Bulgaria and as far as the Italy game goes, who knows? Anything can happen in international football…

What do you think of the squad?