Along with a signfiicant increase in funding, Irish football's academy structures will need to be streamlined going into the future, according to former League of Ireland defender Graham Gartland.
Last week, the FAI's academy development manager Will Clarke discussed the vast funding required to boost the work being done at academy level in this country and also spoke about the areas in which Irish football continually falls short in comparison to continental peers.
Clare said that approximately €10m per year needs to be invested just to remain competitive with other mid-ranking European nations - about half of that total outlay ideally coming from Government and other stakeholders.
Stark figures show that there are just a total of ten full-time academy staff members within Irish football despite the fact that 24 academies exist, while League of Ireland clubs' academy budgets would fall within the bracket of a European minnow.
In contrast, the likes of Croatia, Denmark and Switzerland, each have between 100 and 200 full-time academy staff members working across around a dozen separate academies per country.
"What the academy system [in Ireland] has done is it has increased the participation levels for 17s, 19s and 20s at a really good level," Gartland explained.
"So I think in that sense the academy system has done well but it does need to be streamlined now.
Graham Gartland and Eoin Doyle discussed the issue of academies and youth structures in depth on this week's podcast.
"The government need to look and the FAI need to look and go, 'Who's actually investing in their academies and they're the academies that we're going to help as well'.
"Because you have to go with the clubs who are willing to put money in themselves instead of the clubs maybe that are doing it as part of the cycle to get a licence.
"Then they become almost like centres of excellence and the FAI then can have more time with them as well.
"The FAI can then go to the clubs and say, 'Look, we've invested in this, we want your players now for these weeks etc and we're going to run a camp with them'.
"It becomes a little bit more inclusive, it becomes a bit like everybody is working together because I do even feel that when the academies came in, the grassroot clubs got their noses out of joint a little bit.
"The trust wasn't there for League of Ireland clubs to do it back then. It's starting to build again but it needs to be where we're all together for the betterment of Irish football."
At a time when there is a focus on the identity of the next Republic of Ireland men's senior manager, Gartland added that what is of greater importance is the health of the game from the grassroots up.
That would in turn deepen the pool of playing talent for the ultimate benefit of the national team rather than a top-down approach where the bulk of money goes towards attracting the future Boys in Green boss.
"There's no budget and if you throw money at a big manager coming in on a big budget, you're taking it away from something else.
"We saw that with the academy figures, that if you're taking money away from an academy, it doesn't really matter what you throw at the top end of it. It's not going to make a difference long-term to the future of Irish football."
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