One F in Foley: The Israel conundrum for the Republic of Ireland

There’s an adage that sport and politics should be kept but somewhat inevitably they do and always have done.

The story of the Republic of Ireland’s pairing in the Nations League group stage next autumn has ignited a fair bit of conversation and debate in recent weeks, and it’s not for the first time.

A lot of it has centred around where the games should be played or even if they should be boycotted altogether. Other speculation has arisen over the possibility of both sides having to play their ‘home’ games abroad. That might mean Ireland playing in Britain and Israel fulfilling their home fixture somewhere like Hungary.

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It’s a real conundrum for two reasons in particular. First, the majority of the Irish population seems to openly oppose the Israeli occupation of Gaza, which has led to a huge rise in pro-Palestinian sentiment. Having been occupied ourselves throughout history, this gives ground to a sense of common grievances.

In addition to that, only a few months ago, the hierarchy of the Football Association of Ireland attended an extraordinary general meeting held by UEFA. There, they openly spoke about proposing to have the Israeli national team banned from playing international football until the conflict is resolved.

Russia’s Issue
Seeing as Russia was excluded from playing in the aftermath of its invasion of Ukraine in 2022, many felt that football’s governing bodies - UEFA (Europe) and FIFA (global) - would follow suit, but alas, they have not. Their reason is that the Gaza issue is an internal civil conflict and therefore not an international issue.

In that case, things were also a little different. Poland originally refused to play Russia, and they had the public backing of the Czechia and Sweden. This time around, there’s no official boycott of playing Israel, and even if Ireland does refuse to play them, there’s no guarantee of anyone else backing us up.

The biggest concern for the FAI in all this is the unknown consequences they may have to face if UEFA punishes them for not fulfilling the fixture. For a number of years now, the association has been in financial peril, and if it were hit with huge fines, it could ruin football in this country.

We are also due to be a co-host of the 2028 European Championships, and if that were to be taken away, it would also create a huge economic suckerpunch for not just the association, but the country as a whole. I suppose it makes one consider that saying what’s right and doing what’s right is not as easy as it sounds.
Not surprisingly, sceptics believe there is a lot more going on behind the scenes than what the likes of UEFA are telling us. Similarly, the GAA has also come under scrutiny for the lack of action taken by their ethics committee to cut any ties with their sponsorship deal from Allianz. A company named as a funder of Israel.
The issue has also found its way into League of Ireland football recently when co-chairperson, Joanna Byrne, was called to resign her position after stating her position that Ireland should boycott the fixture. So, as you can see, it’s not merely a football issue anymore.

Richie Sadlier
In a recent broadcast for RTÉ, Richie Sadlier stressed that this will be an ongoing issue that will likely take hold of a lot of Irish football programmes for a while. He is very open in his belief that the games against Israel “shouldn’t go ahead, but they probably will.”

Sadlier gave a heartfelt and impassioned talk about his feelings about Gaza. To him, the acts of genocide, forced starvation, and detention centres - which he compared to death camps - made him believe that UEFA and the wider world would step in and not allow this to happen, but his idealism seemed broken.

While, of course, what’s going on in Gaza is much more important than a couple of football matches, there’s still no harm in using the game of football to use this debate as a microcosm for understanding a wider issue. This so-called ‘Israel Conundrum’ for Ireland could see us question ourselves over the next few months.