Because modern football is largely rubbish, Ireland won't be wearing green very much in the Euros. UEFA confirmed yesterday that Ireland are the designated 'away' side in their final two group games against Belgium and Italy, and as, a result, will wear their changed strip of white in those final group games. Green does not exactly clash with Belgium's red nor Italy's blue, but we are forced to wear a changed strip nonetheless.
This is not an optical negative: the white kit's really rather nice:
The 2016/17 Ireland away kit from @UmbroIreland!
Pre-order now at https://t.co/6KE6t8keTS. #COYBIG #EURO2016 pic.twitter.com/O7OIWa2iz2— FAIreland ⚽️🇮🇪 (@FAIreland) April 29, 2016
The issue is Ireland's largely terrible record in changed strips. Not that Ireland have a staggeringly successful win record at major tournaments -in 19 games, we have a grand total of three wins: versus England in Euro'88, Italy in 1994 and Saudi Arabia in 2002. (Thanks for the latter goes to Saudi 'keeper Mohamed Al-Deayea, whose Wikipedia bizarrely claims he has been voted Asia's Greatest Goalkeeper of the Century).
Our overall record was quite respectable until the giant Euro 2012-shaped turd landed in our lives. Up to then, Ireland had played 16 games in major tournaments: winning three, drawing an enormous nine (we are counting games that went to penalty shootouts as draws) and losing four. All of our wins came in green, and half of the defeats came in that colour also: to Holland at Euro '88 and Italy in 1990.
There is a pretty even sartorial spread in terms the draws: four were achieved while in green, with the remaining five came as Ireland wore white.
Against the advice of our psychiatrist, we will now recall Euro 2012, which swelled the defeat column considerably: 3-1 to Croatia (in green), 4-0 to Spain (again, in green) and 2-0 to Italy (a white kit was a novel addition, the result was familiar).
So Ireland's win ratio in green reads three from 12, or 25%, while the win ratio in white is an even zero percent.
We can only hope that statistic is changed in France.
COYBIGW.
