Original Umbro football shirt Ireland 2003/04

The Ireland national football team is a team of footballers that represents the Republic of Ireland in international matches and competitions, such as the preliminary rounds for the FIFA World Cup and the European Football Championship. Ireland usually plays its home games at the Aviva Stadium in Dublin and is known for its large group of regular supporters, nicknamed The Green Army.

Robbie Keane, played the most matches of all internationals: more than 146 international matches in eighteen years. He is also the top scorer of all time with 68 goals, more than forty more than the number two on the top scorers list, Niall Quinn. Ireland has no particular rivalry with the British countries, apart from Northern Ireland, with which it formed a single national team in the early twentieth century; most often it hit the national teams of Poland and Spain in an official international match.

The country played its first official international match in March 1926 and has since played more than 500 matches, first as the Irish Free State and from 1938 as an independent Republic. For decades, Ireland competed in qualifying tournaments for the FIFA World Cup and the European Men's Football Championship, but was - often barely - unsuccessful.

In the 1980s, the Irish team had a golden generation, which under the leadership of the Englishman Jack Charlton in 1988 for the first time managed to get qualification for an international tournament. Success under Charlton lasted until 1994. For over fifteen years, Ireland returned to the role of mediocre member of UEFA, failing several times in a row in qualifying for the major championships. Under Giovanni Trapattoni it qualified for the second time for a European Championship in 2012; Ireland also qualified for the following tournament, which took place in France in June 2016.