The first qualifying game of the 2012 European Championships takes place today and features our very own Brian Kerr. Appointed as Faroe Islands coach in April 2009, Brian has already done the business, leading them to their first competitive victory. They face Estonia tonight and we wish him the best.
He does Comedy too, does Brian.
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Here's what he has had to say to Fifa.com
When you took over Brian I think the Faroe Islands were 166th in the FIFA/Coca-Cola World Ranking and you’ve brought them up almost 50 places to 117th, is the top 100 a target for you?
Yes, but I think we had one big result last year over Lithuania which made a massive difference to us; we haven’t had too many games since then. We got four points last time round which was quite a good points total and also our goal difference overall wasn’t so bad. Apart from the game in Guingamp, the team throughout qualification were fairly competitive and I think the target we’ve set ourselves is; can we get as many points as we got last time round and maybe some more, so that we’re in a higher seeding pot for the next draw. That’s my ambition.In terms of the bigger picture, I think one of the things we needed to do is get more of our players playing outside of the Faroe Islands for the experience and for a higher level of football, as this would help them hugely for international football. We’ve had a few flickers of light on that one, the fact that Johan Simun Edmundsson has signed for Newcastle, Gunnar Nielsen was the first player from the Faroe Islands to play in the Premier League last season and now he’s gone on loan to Tranmere Rovers as their No1 goalkeeper and we have Atli Gregerson who has signed for Ross County in Scotland and Christian Holst who has been playing at Silkeborg in Denmark for the last few seasons. But we need more to do the same. The good thing at present is that there is a lot of interest in many of the current U-21 group, so it all bodes well for the future.
