Irish Football Association

The Irish Football Association was born in Belfast in 1880 and is the fourth oldest federation in the world, behind only England, Scotland and Wales, having governed football across the whole island until the 1921 partition. For a nation of fewer than two million people, the record is outsized: World Cup quarter-finals in 1958, victory over hosts Spain in 1982 with Gerry Armstrong's goal, a place at Mexico 86 and Norman Whiteside's record as the youngest player ever at a World Cup, aged 17, beating Pelé's mark. It gave football George Best, perhaps the greatest talent never to grace a major finals, and in 2016 it wrote the missing chapter: a first appearance at a European Championship, with the Green and White Army filling France with song. Windsor Park remains one of international football's loudest cathedrals.