Eamon Dunphy comparing Martin O’Neill to Joe Schmidt is simply unfair

“Good footballers are not appearing any more. (Lionel) Messi and (Cristiano) Ronaldo set the bar and there is no one approaching them.

“Look at what Joe Schmidt is doing with the Ireland rugby team and compare him to Martin O’Neill for God’s sake. Football is a dying game. “It’s dying because there are not any good players coming through. I mean, Ibrahimovic should be working in a car wash and they still talk about him as if he is one of the great players of all time. Even Pep Guardiola couldn’t make him a player when he had him for a year at Barcelona.”

https://twitter.com/GuardiolaTweets/status/941941063719247872 It's certainly a withering assessment of football. Although, it's simply not fair comparing Joe Schmidt to Martin O'Neill. Ireland, as a rugby squad, are one of the finest in the world. The talent and experience Schmidt has to work with does not equate to what O'Neill has at his disposal. That's not to say Schmidt hasn't done a stellar job as Ireland head coach. He obviously has. But it's still strange that Dunphy would completely denounce football, a sport which has given him a livelihood. Also, do we take it with a pinch of salt? Probably. I would be surprised if Dunphy tunes in to watch Bath v Toulon in the European Champions Cup, which is on at the same time as Manchester City v Tottenham. His criticism of Ibrahimovic is completely out of left field too. Fair enough, the striker is now 36 and approaching the end of his career, but this is a player who scored 28 goals for Manchester United last season. How many car wash employees can do that? It's perhaps the single most bizarre thing anyone has ever said about Ibrahimovic, a footballer who has won 11 league titles in five different countries.