Liam Brady 'no longer in love with the game' as he prepares to take final bow

Liam Brady said he was "no longer in love with the game" as he takes his final bow as part of RTÉ's football punditry team for Republic of Ireland's home Euro 2024 qualifier against Gibraltar tonight.

Brady, one of Ireland's greatest ever footballers, has been a mainstay of RTÉ's football coverage since 1998, aside from his two-year stint on the Republic of Ireland backroom team for the 2010 World Cup qualification campaign.

This morning, it was confirmed that the 67-year old would be retiring from his role on RTÉ after the clash with Gibraltar.

In an interview with RTÉ's News at One this afternoon, Brady said that while he still enjoyed watching great players, he had grown disillusioned with many of the factors bearing down on the sport, notably the prevelance of sportswashing and the influence of social media.

"Things have changed with football now. I'm not in love with the game anymore," Brady told presenter Gavin Jennings.

"I like watching it and watching the best players. But all the things that surround it are not really for me.

"And then I suppose the arrival of social media in the last 10 years. I'm an old dog and you can't teach me new tricks.

"So, Twitter and Facebook and things like that, they're all gobbledegook to me.

"The business side of it, it's a multi-billion pound business. The ownership of clubs in England, the arrival of these countries, Qatar, Saudi Arabia. I don't feel it's been that good for the game to be honest."

Brady created a stir last Friday in the wake of Ireland's calamitous 2-1 loss away to Greece in Athens on Friday night when he proclaimed the current crop of international players as "the worst" in his lifetime.

His comments were subsequently put to Stephen Kenny and James McClean in Sunday's