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“Michel Louwagie is a shrewd operator,” says Dominic Foley of KAA Gent’s managing director. “There’d be no wasting money. His scouting network is all over Africa and South America, where he brings them in cheap, builds them up and sells them on. That’s how clubs of this size survive.”
Foley knows all about the medieval town of Gent. The Republic of Ireland international spent four years at the Royal Athletics Association (KAA), scoring 39 goals in 161 appearances for De Buffalo’s after a mildly controversial switch from Bohemians and before a mildly controversial move to Cercle Brugge.
“They never over extend,” he explains. “The difference with Irish clubs is they grow talent but manage to keep them in the first team for two, three years before a bigger fish comes in from Germany or Holland. Back in my time, the golden crop ended up in the Premier League.”
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Martin McDonagh’s black comedy ‘In Bruges’ can be referenced simply because Foley quickly noticed that Belgians exist on a similar wavelength to the Irish.
“It was the best time in my career,” says the 46-year-old. “Gent suited me and I suited Gent. Everything worked well, at both clubs. People in Belgium are a bit like ourselves, they do their work but when they go out, they go out.
“It was very similar, both clubs had English as their language so it was easy to settle.”
Gent are more Bohs than Rovers if the comparison to Irish football is to hold – winning only one Jupiler Pro league title in 2015 despite lucrative progress on the Europa scene during the 2010s – but that’s presuming the rise of League of Ireland clubs will gather pace throughout the 2020s and 2030s.
“We have that age-old problem; I would love to see every Irish player heading over to English clubs staying in Ireland until they are 20, 21. It means several clubs need to have in place what Rovers have, with the likes of Stephen Bradley and Stephen McPhail, guys who have been there and done it, and can give good advice.
“I think a lot higher percentage of players would last longer in England if they waited. Get the right kind of football education from the right people but with the right kind of facilities in place.
“Belgium were so far ahead in my time that we facilitated 17-, 18-year-olds in our first team who needed to go to school in the morning and then come in for the afternoon session. The club paid for their education.”
Rovers can point to the education of Gavin Bazunu and the current crop of transition year students attached to their Roadstone academy.
“If Irish football wants to get to the [Belgium] level then we need four or five Shamrock Rovers and that means the League of Ireland must be full-time. It comes down to money, having a good backer, and clever investment.”
A Cork minor hurler, his small ball existence was cut short by a trial period at Liverpool, as he swallowed hard while watching Galway pip Seán Óg Ó hAilpín’s side in the 1994 All-Ireland final.
“I don’t have any regrets from my football career, I travelled here and there, and only would have regretted not doing so, but if there’s one regret, it is not playing in that final. Jimmy Barry-Murphy was our manager. Would I have been worth a few points? Surely.”
Foley had already made a decision to hedge his bets after seeing the look of despair on 17 boys’ faces when Manchester City signed just three of 20 players on trial.
“They all left school at 15 and what had they got at 18? I’ll always remember that day at Maine Road, and thinking ‘f**king hell!’”
He went home, got the Leaving Cert and signed for Wolverhampton Wanderers, just before a comet whizzed though the club.
“We were lucky, Robbie Keane was there, but so was Keith Andrews, Glen Crowe, and about six or seven other Irish lads, a home away from home.
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“The days of [multiple] Irish players featuring in the top English clubs are probably gone. We are competing against the world. I think our expectation has to be lowered a little.”
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Foley’s Wikipedia page has a section entitled “transfer controversies”. After his time in England at Wolves and Watford, when he was mostly sent out on loan, including a season in Portugal with Braga, he returned to Bohs, where he was snapped up by Gent following the clubs’ Intertoto Cup meeting in 2005.
Rumours of secret meetings were floated, as they were when he moved to Bruges around the same time Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson were filming in the “fairytale town”.
“I think people made things out a bit that weren’t. There are legal binding contracts involved at every club. There was no way I could have left Bohs unless there was a breach of contract.
“Football is football, business is business, I had a chance to go to a higher level. There was no real story about the end of my contract in Gent. I spoke to the manager [Michel Preud’homme] and I wasn’t in his plans. I was captain of the club, scored in the cup final, but I knew my time was up.”
Foley did witness the arrival of Belgium’s golden generation as Kevin De Bruyne, Romelu Lukaku, Eden Hazard sped through the ranks, but the Red Devils fairytale decade ended sans silverware.
“It was always a feeling that they had the players but they had two countries within the one country. There were the Dutch speakers and the French speakers and there was always a rift. That was the reason put down to them not actually winning anything – the team spirit and camaraderie, rather than the talent.”
Not so Irish after all? “I was never in the camp to see it but I spoke to people and there was that Flemish-French speaking difference in the country.”
