Ireland Going Ahead With Israel Matches Against Everybody’s Wishes

Ireland and Israel are, at least for now, set for some really weird soccer matches. Unfriendlies, you might say. Their national men’s teams have a home-and-home series scheduled to open this weekend, only there are no home games for either side. Both matches will be played in Central Europe: one in an empty stadium, the other with only Israeli fans. The top story in Ireland these days, sports or otherwise, is that the games will be played at all.  

“I think we all agree we shouldn’t be in the position where we have to play the game,” John Martin, head of the Football Association of Ireland (FAI), said last week. 

And Ireland manager Heimir Hallgrimsson said he’d personally polled all his players, and “none of us feel comfortable playing in these games.”