Ireland

Irish football lives on a charming paradox: it is a country that produces footballers in bulk and exports nearly all of them. Ever since the game arrived with the British garrisons in the nineteenth century, the natural path of Irish talent has crossed the Irish Sea, from Johnny Giles to Liam Brady, from Roy Keane to Robbie Keane, leaving the League of Ireland, founded in 1921 in the year of the island's partition, to a cult of devotees who lovingly call it the Greatest League in the World, irony and pride mixed in the same phrase. The national team had its golden era under Jack Charlton, from Euro 88 to the 1990 World Cup quarter finals, when half the country stopped to watch Packie Bonner save penalties in Genoa. The league runs from February to November, by calendar year, in small grounds where football contends with the rain and with the competition of Gaelic games and rugby. A small country, a stubborn league and a passion that never needed European trophies to justify itself.