{"id":348268,"date":"2026-03-16T00:44:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-16T00:44:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/348268\/"},"modified":"2026-03-16T00:44:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-16T00:44:08","slug":"former-ireland-international-kevin-long-makes-loi-return-with-waterford","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/348268\/","title":{"rendered":"Former Ireland international Kevin Long makes LOI return with Waterford"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>WATERFORD HAVE COMPLETED a deal to bring former Ireland international Kevin Long back to the League of Ireland.<\/p>\n<p>Cork native <a href=\"https:\/\/waterfordfc.ie\/2026\/03\/15\/welcome-to-waterford-fc-kevin-long\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Long (35) returns to Irish football<\/a> more than 16 years after leaving Cork City for Premier League Burnley.<\/p>\n<p>The defender went on to make 48 appearances for the Clarets in England\u2019s top flight across seven seasons before leaving Turf Moor in 2023 for spells at Birmingham City and, most recently, with Toronto FC in Major League Soccer.<\/p>\n<p>Long, who has 17 senior Irish caps, said: \u201cI\u2019m excited to be here and looking forward to getting going.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ve been away from Ireland for a long time so it feels good to be home.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHopefully I can bring my experience to this club and we can start climbing up the table.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Waterford head coach Jon Daly said Long \u201chas fantastic experience at the highest levels of the game and brings real leadership, quality and professionalism to the squad.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cKevin is a player who will set standards every day, and I\u2019m confident his presence will make a huge impact both on and off the pitch for this group.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WATERFORD HAVE COMPLETED a deal to bring former Ireland international Kevin Long back to the League of Ireland.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":348269,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,158693,2539,43,3405,136433],"class_list":["post-348268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-kevin-long","tag-league-of-ireland","tag-news","tag-soccer","tag-waterford-fc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348268","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=348268"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348268\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/348269"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=348268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=348268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=348268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}