will now be played<\/a> in Ba\u010dka Topola, Serbia, behind closed doors.<\/p>\n Israel have, since the October 7 attacks, been forced to stage their \u2018home\u2019 games outside of their homeland, meaning Debrecen in Hungary will also host the first meeting with Ireland on September 27.<\/p>\n
Former Ireland captains James McClean and Louise Quinn, along with ex-manager Brian Kerr and Shamrock Rovers skipper Pico Lopes have backed the Stop The Game campaign, a movement intent on ensuring Ireland don\u2019t share a pitch with Israel.<\/p>\n
Ireland manager Heimir Hallgr\u00edmsson has, stretching back to last October, expressed surprise at how a different standard was applied by Fifa and Uefa to Russia, who remain barred from all competitive football in the world arising from their invasion of Ukraine in 2022.<\/p>\n
Former captain S\u00e9amus Coleman spoke of how the handling of the fixtures by the FAI and Government has left players in an \u2018uncomfortable\u2019 situation\u2019.<\/p>\n
Cunningham, who won 72 caps between 1995 and 2005, says he would respect any player\u2019s desire to make themselves unavailable on grounds of conscience, yet doesn\u2019t foresee that being the case.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy gut reaction tells me that the majority of players would want to play it,\u201d he said, speaking at a Premier Sports event, where his fellow pundit Shay Given refused to discuss the Israel matches.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor any player who decides not to turn up for those Israel games, it won’t be the end of his Ireland international career.<\/p>\n
“In fact, he might get some plaudits, a bit of respect from people. But that option is there for him.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is messy but I think the game should have gone ahead in Dublin.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt would be a good thing to see the Israeli team come onto our venue, to see their national anthem respected inside the stadium because, that for me, that would send a signal from the Irish people to the Israeli people who have suffered as well in this conflict too.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn a human level, we are actually together here. There are politicians making decisions around this, but genuinely between the Israeli people and the Irish people there is a bit of understanding there on a human level about what has been happening.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, I would like to see that, in a funny way. I know people will say \u2018how can you suggest that?\u2019 But I think it would resonate more for me rather than people throwing things at the Israelis or spraying paint on walls in hotels that the Israeli team would have stayed in.<\/p>\n
\u201cUs denying the Israelis a game in Dublin and then cancelling the game doesn\u2019t move things any way forward in it in a positive way.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The former Millwall, Wimbledon and Birmingham City defender feels the viewpoint of the Irish people towards Israel has already been conveyed.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are plenty of avenues available to express an opinion and rightly so,\u201d the 55-year-old explained.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is not a weekend that goes by when you don\u2019t see people in Ireland protesting on the streets. And that is a good thing.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is a perception about how Irish people feel about Israel and Israeli foreign policies, the Palestinian issue.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat is pretty much out there already, we all know where people stand, so I don\u2019t feel cancelling this game takes the argument any further.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat about if we draw Israel for next year\u2019s Euros? Are we not going to play those games again and accept expulsion from the Euros here in Dublin in 2028.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat’s where we’re going, if we’re being consistent.<\/p>\n
\u201cWho’s going to take the pain of that? I’d suggest some people who are actually not huge football supporters won\u2019t take an amount of pain. But the players will and that rubs me up.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Ireland captain Kenny Cunningham insists the FAI should not boycott the upcoming fixtures against Israel and wishes…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":617432,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1113,61,60,43],"class_list":["post-617431","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-fai","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/617431","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=617431"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/617431\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/617432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=617431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=617431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=617431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}