Ireland, 1988-1996.

Basically Jack Charlton’s tenure as Ireland manager. Not the best football but the best results. 3 tournaments, performed relatively well in a couple of them. Had some great players like Packie Bonner, Paul McGrath, Ronnie Whelan, Day Houghton, John Aldridge, David O’Leary and a young Roy Keane.

I suppose you could extend it to 2002 to conicide with Keane’s prime and other good players like Duff, Robbie Keane and Given but they didn’t qualify for a tournament from 94-2002. Were still miles ahead of what they’ve been the last 10 years.

Morientes and Aspas were all at Liverpool for longer than a season.

Luxembourg. For most of my life, they’ve been amongst the whipping boys of qualifying groups but were pretty decent in the last World Cup qualifying group and finished on 17 points in this one and could still qualify through the nation’s league.

Thought there would’ve been a chance in Australia’s 31-0 win over American Samoa, but a bunch of fellas just scored a lot of goals. One scored 13.

Taking that team to second wasn’t hard.

The fall-off is why I hate players getting nominated for the Ballon d’Or off the back of a great World Cup. Bounou finished 13th or something. A great World Cup should strengthen a players chances at winning it who were already going to be nominated I remember the 2002 World Cup, several Senaglese, Turkish, Japanese and South Korean players got nominated who didn’t amount to much that year outside of the World Cup.