On Monday, Martin accepted the situation is “really difficult” but insists the players “shouldn’t be in a position where they get criticised”.<\/p>\n
“The decision shouldn’t fall on the players because it wasn’t a players’ decision – it was a decision by the association, by the board, the executive. People like me, [FAI CEO] David Courell made the decision, not the players,” Martin told RTE Sport.<\/p>\n
“The association has been on record saying we don’t want to be playing these games. I don’t want to play the games but for that to impact Irish football, that’s where I would disagree with some of the voices saying we shouldn’t play the game.<\/p>\n
“I agree with the vast majority of what people are saying, but the aspect of not playing the game is where we have a difference of opinion.<\/p>\n
“I think it’s [best] for Irish football we go and play the game.”<\/p>\n
In May, defender Seamus Coleman<\/a> says a decision to play the games “should not have landed on our [players] toes”, while captain Nathan Collins<\/a> insisted “we are not going to stand against” any player who opts out of the Israel fixtures.<\/p>\n “It’s a personal choice for the player,” Martin continued.<\/p>\n “We have a fantastic manager and person in Heimir [Hallgrimsson] who will manage that, but at all stages we must mind the player. <\/p>\n “It should be a player-centre world we are in, we are always mindful of the physical environment the player is in and we need to protect them as much as possible.<\/p>\n “It’s going to be very difficult because it does fall on them because they are on the pitch, but I would hope people can see they are following the decision the association took as opposed to putting them at the centre of this.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On Monday, Martin accepted the situation is “really difficult” but insists the players “shouldn’t be in a position…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":617075,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[85,46,105],"class_list":["post-617074","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/617074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=617074"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/617074\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/617075"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=617074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=617074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=617074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}