There are defeats you can rationalise, defeats you can live with, even defeats that leave you frustrated but still with a thread of hope.
And then there are nights like Tuesday in Yerevan. Ireland's collapse against Armenia was yet another stumble on the long road of mediocrity - but it felt like a marker, a line in the sand moment for Irish football.
Two games into World Cup qualification, and the campaign already feels dead. All hope and expectation enjoyed over the last week is dead. This is now our new reality.
Heimir Hallgrimsson may still be in the dugout, but his race looks run. The Icelander has always carried himself with calm and likability, but in the harsh realm of international football, charm counts for little without good performances and results.
Ireland have delivered neither performances nor enough points, and the window for progress is already slammed shut.
The best-case scenario for Hallgrímsson now is clinging on until November, taking Ireland to that last game in Budapest against Hungary with some faint glimmer of hope alive. Anything less and the curtain will most likely fall.
The irony is that whether he stays or goes may not matter much at all.
Irish football has developed a bad habit: using the national manager as a shield for deeper failings.
Hallgrímsson has wrestled with an inadequate player pool, being under resourced and a governing body that lurches from one crisis to another.
Change the man in charge and little shifts; the squad is what it is, and unfortunately the system that produces it remains broken.
Hallgrímsson has been undermined in ways both subtle and glaring. His appointment was botched from the off, the timing of his announcement very controversial.
The latest embarrassing episode being forced to choose between a fitness coach and a psychologist. Amateur hour.
And when the explanation offered is that it was "not affordable," it only underlines how hollow the FAI’s talk of progress really is.
This is the same association that went 231 days without a manager on the payroll, saving an estimated €400,000 in wages.
If that all sounds bleak, it gets worse. The Brexit rule, which restricts the ability of Irish teenagers to move abroad before they turn 18, has yet to be fully felt.
When it does, the stream of young players who are trying to reach the level of international football will dwindle further. Without urgent investment in the League of Ireland’s academies, we are staring down the barrel of true decline. Rock bottom is not here yet, but it is coming.
The nightmare scenario is obvious: Ireland becoming permanent minnows, surviving on scraps and leaning ever more heavily on the diaspora to keep squads competitive.
Hopeful phone calls to Liverpool, Glasgow, and London in search of a willing grandparent connection. That may deliver a player or two, but it is no foundation for a footballing identity.
"The question is whether the FAI have learned anything from the mistakes of the past decade. The safe bet is no."
Potentially another managerial hunt looms. Names will be tossed around, CVs considered, but the grim truth is that the Ireland job is not an attractive one.
The pay is modest compared to club football, the squad is threadbare, the politics are messy, and the likelihood of success is minimal. Whoever takes the role will be painted as saviour in their unveiling press conference, but the cycle will most likely repeat.
The question is whether the FAI have learned anything from the mistakes of the past decade. The safe bet is no.
The most recent managerial appointments for both the men and women and the processes that led to those appointments have not been ideal. The fear among fans is that this will be just another chapter in the same story.
For Hallgrímsson, the only lifeline is Hungary in November. If Ireland can somehow arrive at that game with qualification still mathematically possible, and if in Budapest we see something resembling a team with fight and identity, then maybe, maybe, he survives.
But that hope feels fanciful. He didn't provide us with any hope in those two games that we look like a team that has a chance, his tactics reactive without being pragmatic. The practicality he was hired for has not materialised.
And yet, it is hard not to feel some sympathy for him. He walked into a job with the deck stacked against him, a job where even his best efforts may never have been enough.
The uncomfortable truth is that the future of Irish football won’t be decided in Armenia or Budapest. It won’t be decided by whether Hallgrímsson is replaced by John O’Shea, Chris Hughton, or anyone else.
It will be decided in whether the FAI and the state finally get serious about grassroots investment, academy structures, and facilities. Without that, the cycle of underachievement is locked in.
For now, though, we are left with the wreckage of another failed campaign. Fans deserve better, players deserve better, and Hallgrímsson probably deserves better too.
But football is not about fairness, it is about results. And on that score, Ireland are once again coming up short.
Watch the Sports Direct FAI Cup quarter-finals with RTÉ Sport. Drogheda United v Shamrock Rovers on Friday from 7pm and St Patrick's Athletic v Galway United on Sunday from 5.30pm. Both matches on RTÉ2 and RTÉ Player
