Maybe Heimir is a really good dentist, but he's a very, very poor football manager

THERE has rightly been plenty of coverage in recent days of the fact that Dubliner Pico Lopes will be going to next year's World Cup.

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The Shamrock Rovers centre-back plays for Cape Verde, his father's home country, and they have qualified against all the odds.

Cape Verde didn't squeeze out of their six-team group, either. They finished four points clear of Cameroon — a force in African football for decades.

The population of Cape Verde is 525,000. That is 60,000 less than Cork.

It's no surprise that the Faroe Islands — population 55,000 — will miss out on the World Cup, but they've given the qualifiers a hell of a shot. In this international break, they beat Montenegro and the Czech Republic, scoring six goals and conceding just one.

Kosovo have a chance of making the playoffs, and they won away to Sweden on Monday night — keeping Alexander Isak of Liverpool and Arsenal’s Viktor Gyokeres under wraps.

The population of Kosovo is roughly the same as that of Dublin.

Curacao has the same population as the Faroes. Their national team are closing in on a World Cup spot too.

This is to put into context where Ireland are, and where they should be.

It is far too easy to put on the poor mouth and moan about the quality of players available to different managers at different times.

There are moans that Ireland don't have enough players in the Premier League, that too often we have to turn to the Championship.

How many realise that the Championship is ranked as the 10th strongest league in the world? It’s ranked ahead of the top divisions in powerful football nations like Portugal and the Netherlands.