![\"Paul](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/RE4AETL42RM3LL7GSN5P6OM7IA.jpg\")
Paul Weller has signed an open letter to the Football Association of Ireland. PICTURE: PA <\/p>\nA boycott of two matches against Israel in the autumn may have \u201cno impact at all\u201d on Fifa or Israel, Taoiseach Micheal Martin has said.<\/p>\n
The Republic of Ireland men\u2019s football team is scheduled to face Israel in two Uefa Nations League fixtures at a neutral venue on September 27 and in Dublin on October 4.<\/p>\n
Paul Weller, Stephen Rea, members of Kneecap and current and former football players have signed an open letter to the Football Association of Ireland (FAI) calling on them to boycott upcoming matches against Israel.<\/p>\n
Paul Weller has signed an open letter to the Football Association of Ireland. PICTURE: PA <\/p>\n
Two sports ministers have said they will not attend the match in Dublin, but said the Government had not sought legal advice about what potential sanctions the FAI might face if they were not to go ahead with the fixtures.<\/p>\n
At a friendly match in the Aviva Stadium in Dublin last night, some fans threw tennis balls with the words Stop The Game on the pitch in protest.<\/p>\n
Asked about the incident and whether the matches should go ahead, the Taoiseach said: \u201cWe don\u2019t want to damage ourselves unnecessarily.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn other words, concede six points to Israel, our ranking goes down. Irish football has been on an upward curve of late, and so on that side, you don\u2019t want to be self-defeating in terms of any actions. The Government doesn\u2019t run Fifa.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Government has been very clear, as indeed have the Irish people, in terms of our opposition to the genocide in Gaza, and the appalling behaviour of the violent settlers who have been facilitated by the Israeli government in the West Bank and by the appalling attacks in Lebanon, and Irish Unifil troops have been consistently endeavouring to preserve the peace and have been supportive of local communities in terms of how to survive the terrible attacks on villages and on their community lives.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is no argument about Ireland\u2019s opposition to what Israel has been doing in Gaza, and everything shouldn\u2019t be reduced to just one match in terms of the articulation of that opposition or protesting about the Israeli government\u2019s behaviour in Gaza itself.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe full implications of, say, if the Irish team unilaterally decided to pull out, the full implications of that in terms of Irish football needs to be worked out.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a presumption that if they did, some of that would impact on Fifa, it may have no impact at all on Fifa, or indeed on Israel, for that matter.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A boycott of two matches against Israel in the autumn may have \u201cno impact at all\u201d on Fifa…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":137372,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[33],"tags":[2982,2714,45429,37,3998,44785,4005],"class_list":["post-137371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-fifa","tag-football","tag-irish","tag-israel","tag-micheal-martin","tag-republic-of-ireland","tag-uefa"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116662527889362637","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137371"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137371\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/137372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}