On the back of what has been a hugely promising week for Irish football, it was hugely deflating to see the Ireland U21 side suffer a historically bad defeat at the hands of Andorra last night.
Jim Crawford’s side had a relatively promising start to the Euro qualification campaign up to that point, looking in the mix for a play-off spot. They were even unfortunate to come up short against reigning champions England away from home on Friday evening.
However, the performance in the 4-0 loss away to Andorra on Tuesday has to be among the worst in Irish football history. The display was shambolic, with Ireland fortunate to not lose the game by even more.
While a scoreline such as that one is sure to send shockwaves around the country, some believe that it has been a long time coming.
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Cawley: Andorra Hammering Was A Long Time Coming For Ireland
The issue of funding in Irish football has been well discussed as this point, with the effects of that now starting to be seen at international level.
Whereas Ireland have stood still when it comes to areas such as player development, many of the so called ‘minnows’ of European football have made massive strides in that regard.
Speaking on RTÉ after last night’s game, Alan Cawley summed up why a result such as this one was a long time coming for Ireland.
🇦🇩 4-0 🇮🇪
‘That’s really damaging…almost embarrassing’ – @alancaw says the result is a sobering one and highlights the issues facing Irish football despite the recent feel-good factor with the senior team pic.twitter.com/G8zmOOMe6d— RTÉ Sport (@RTEsport) November 18, 2025
Andorra were very, very good in Tallaght. My eyes don’t like and I knew what I saw. Again tonight they were very good.
That’s to put it into a little bit of context. People will look at it like Andorra the minnow, beating us 4-0. It’s a very embarrassing defeat, it’s really poor…
The stuff that we discuss on the regular around Irish football and how far we have fallen, the upsurge won’t happen over night.
The government funding that has been put in place to academies, what we’re searching and crying out for, it’s going to take a lot of time for us to get back to some sort of level where we want to be.
It won’t happen over night, it won’t happen off the back of the senior time beating Portugal or Hungary, it takes time. To be fair to Andorra, for all the years we were falling, they were on the way up.
They were technically very good. You can outline all the clubs they play at or wherever they might be, they’re very good and trying to do things right.
We haven’t been trying to do things right for a long time and that’s the result of it there.
Steps are being taken to rectify the funding issue in Irish football, but as Alan Cawley points out, it will be some time before the benefits of those moves are felt.
For now, we will just hope that results such as the one last night do not become a regular occurrence for Ireland at various international age groups.
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