the FAI voted to submit a motion to UEFA <\/a>to ban Israel from its European club and international competitions.<\/p>\nFollowing the Nations League draw, the association confirmed it would fulfil the upcoming fixtures against Israel.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, Drogheda United co-chairperson Joanna Byrne claimed the club’s board of directors said her position was untenable following her statement around the Republic of Ireland v Israel fixture in the UEFA Nations League.<\/p>\n
Byrne, a sitting Sinn F\u00e9in TD for Louth, has said she will not be stepping down from her voluntary position with the Boynesiders.<\/p>\n
Reacting to the draw and to the calls for a boycott, RT\u00c9 soccer analyst Richie Sadlier said that in his view, the game shouldn’t be played and that UEFA should have banned Israel from international competition.<\/p>\n
However, in the context of UEFA refusing to sanction Israel, Sadlier argued it would “an act of self sabotage” for Ireland to boycott the fixture.<\/p>\n
“The difficult and horrible and spirit-crushing reality that we have to accept is that in the world of football at the moment, the punishment for taking a moral stance against all of the crimes that I outlined is far greater than the punishment that is meted out to the country that is alleged to have carried out those crimes.<\/p>\n
“It would be an act of self sabotage from the FAI to boycott it because I think UEFA will absolutely crush them to make such a strong deterrent to prevent anyone else from doing the same.”<\/p>\n
\n
Speaking on the same panel, Alan Cawley said any sanctions that followed a boycott could be ruinous for Irish football.<\/p>\n
“It could lead to the ruination of football here. We just don’t know in terms of the sanctions [that may be imposed]. The FAI are already in financial peril.<\/p>\n
“If we were all to sit down in an ideal world and say should this game be going ahead, we’d all agree it shouldn’t.<\/p>\n
“UEFA are the governing body that should be taking charge and taking control of this situation and implementing their rules that have been breached. But they’re not doing that.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From the moment the Republic of Ireland drew Israel in the men’s Nations League, debate has swirled around…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":304905,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":{"0":"post-304904","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304904","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=304904"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304904\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/304905"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=304904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=304904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=304904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}