The key is that the interference cannot be unwanted i.e. if the Member Association complains to FIFA, then FIFA can - and does - apply "the nuclear option" of complete suspension from FIFA. At which point the Governments in question usually back off, since it is invariably very unpopular within the country at large to see their teams, domestic and NT, at all levels, unable to host any foreign teams or themselves play abroad.Originally Posted by Stuttgart88
However, what constitutes "unwanted" is key, since often the interference will take the form of: "If you [Member Association] don't do what we [Government] want, then we will withdraw all financial backing and co-operation from your organisation". At which point the MA normally "agrees" to the interference.
Considering the FAI's financial position, this latter is undoubtedly the case here.
Indeed.
I mean, the likes of Blatter or Infantino can't be doing with Governments looking closely into their affairs, can they?
Especially the American Government !The key is that the interference cannot be unwanted i.e. if the Member Association complains to FIFA, then FIFA can - and does - apply "the nuclear option" of complete suspension from FIFA. At which point the Governments in question usually back off, since it is invariably very unpopular within the country at large to see their teams, domestic and NT, at all levels, unable to host any foreign teams or themselves play abroad.
However, what constitutes "unwanted" is key, since often the interference will take the form of: "If you [Member Association] don't do what we [Government] want, then we will withdraw all financial backing and co-operation from your organisation". At which point the MA normally "agrees" to the interference.
Considering the FAI's financial position, this latter is undoubtedly the case here.
Indeed.
I mean, the likes of Blatter or Infantino can't be doing with Governments looking closely into their affairs, can they?
‘The politics within Irish football is unbelievable’ – FAI assistant director of football Shane Robinson
https://www.independent.ie/sport/soc...350637528.html
Well it's not "unbelievable," it is corruption and incompetence and if you are the AD, then DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT
Further to this discussion:
Spanish government to oversee football federation
Football's world governing body Fifa and European governing body Uefa say they are closely monitoring the situation with great concern.
Fifa regulations state that member nations shall manage their affairs independently and without influence from third parties.
"Fifa and Uefa will seek additional information to assess the extent to which the CSD's appointment of the so-called 'Supervision, Normalisation and Representation Commission' may affect the RFEF's obligation to manage its affairs independently and without undue government interference," they said in a joint statement.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football...s/cedxjpw28vlo
It's one thing suspending some minor Caribbean or African federation, but taking on the Spanish? You could sell tickets for that one.
I don't see Uefa getting too much involved,not because Spain is super big but because the crisis situation calls for direct oversight.
Afaiu the Spanish government (most probably through the Spanish National Sports Agency) have appointed a special committee ("independent persons of recognised prestige.") to oversee the function of the FA until new elections are held. All this is in the circumstance when an association cannot manage its own affairs and is the subject of a widespread corruption investigation "corruption in business, improper management of assets and money laundering".
Although all that just sounds like a regular day in the Delaney era.
Last edited by geysir; 29/04/2024 at 5:55 PM.
There's a Malachy Clerkin article about the same story in the IT, with a line
on Will Clarke LOI development manager and Shane Robinson; 'neither of them came peddling guesswork. The situation is dire, everyone knows that. They came to inform you that it’s far, far worse than you think'.
Shane is quoted as saying "The solidarity payment (from UEFA) is for youth development. There needs to be criteria put in place and audits of how that money is distributed.”
I take it that he's referring to the separate UEFA solidarity scheme to distribute funds to each member association to redistribute to the non-participating clubs from the top division and all for the purpose of funding development coaching.
Afair this money was not distributed to clubs during the FAI's long era of covert corruption, perhaps Shane is saying it's still not being distributed as per Uefa criteria.
I had a look at the Icelandic FA's (KSI) accounts for the year 2023
KSI's distribution of UEFA's solidarity payment is clearly accounted for, a total of Eur 1m+ was granted, each of the 8 non participating clubs received Eur116,000,
even the 3 clubs that did participate received a compensation award of about Eur30,000.
The FAI are not required to make public such financial details.
It was allocated - it wasn't necessarily paid to clubs, but it was offset against league fees, referees' fees, fines, etc
If so that's bizarre, barter is not accounting and especially when there is self interest in how it is equated . Also that's saying the solidarity payments were not allocated as per UEFA criteria to the LOI clubs and it follows that usage of solidarity funds for development were not accounted for by the clubs.
In Iceland the FA takes care of the league and referees' fees. You might the impression that the FAI are out to punish clubs for the 'right' to participate in the LOI
Of course it's accounting. You owe me ten grand, I owe you ten grand, we'll call that quits. Both entries are clearly called out. Perfectly simple. It doesn't stop the funds being applied correctly or that this can be accounted for either.
How is there self-interest in how it's equated?
Of course it would be great if participation fees were reduced (I think they have been since I was involved at that level) or if referees' fees were covered centrally, but that's a separate point
I couldn't open that link so here's the full article if same for other people:
Malachy Clerkin: A rare dose of FAI truth reveals that Irish soccer is in a worse state than you think – The Irish Times
Nine players. Nine. Hold that number in your head for a minute. We’ll come back to it.
There was an FAI briefing during the week. No! Stop! Don’t flee! This was different. Depressing, still, yes. But different nonetheless.
It was one of those rare occasions where the usual obfuscations and prevarications didn’t apply. This wasn’t Jonathan Hill dancing on the head of a pin to try to explain how a joke in an email somehow ended up with nearly €7 million in Government funding being withheld. It wasn’t FAI officials showing a turn of pace on Kildare Street to get away from journalists after an Oireachtas hearing. It wasn’t Marc Canham dodging questions during an in-house FAI TV interview about the search for a new manager.
It was none of those. Instead, it was two well-informed, homework-done individuals with a PowerPoint presentation and a library of brutalising stats. Will Clarke is the League Of Ireland development manager. Shane Robinson is Canham’s second-in-command, the FAI’s assistant director of football. Neither of them came peddling guesswork. The situation is dire, everyone knows that. They came to inform you that it’s far, far worse than you think.
The stats whooshed out in a blizzard, all of them drifting into a thick, heavy blanket of bad news. We have somehow designed a system whereby Ireland has 24 soccer academies and just 10 full-time staff for them. Only four countries in Europe have fewer than one coach per academy – our compatriots in this regard are Northern Ireland, Andorra and Luxembourg.
To compare all that against the best in class, Portugal has seven academies and 315 full-time academy staff. If you ever wonder why there is always such a reliable flow of Portuguese players into the top teams and leagues in Europe, it isn’t by accident. The accident is when one of ours makes it.
And of course, fewer of ours than ever are doing so. As Gavin Cummiskey reported during the week, Clarke had some entirely grim numbers about the collapse of playing minutes for Irish players at the top of the game over the past decade. In 2012/13, 30 Irishmen played 44,205 minutes in the top five European leagues. Last season, 16 Irish players registered 9,818 minutes between them at that elite level.
You can get blinded by all the figures but you can’t not see the trend. A 78 per cent drop in 10 seasons. Fewer Irish players than ever are playing fewer minutes than ever at the level of the game that matters most. And if that doesn’t drive home the gravity of the situation, then brace yourself. Because it’s arguably not even the worst part.
This is where the nine players come in. According to the presentation, there are currently just nine footballers in Ireland between the ages of 17 and 18 who are receiving full-time professional coaching. Since Brexit has cut off the time-worn path to the UK for promising Irish teenagers, the system here has had to pick up the slack – a job for which it is disastrously underfunded and cumbersomely designed.
Nine players. Not even the makings of a full team. Another 28 are part-time and those numbers don’t include the likes of Mason Melia at St Pat’s and Jaden Umeh in Cork, who are still in school. But, for context, back in pre-Brexit times, anywhere between 30 and 50 players aged 16/17 went to England every year and became full-time professionals. We don’t have English football to do that job for us any more. We have to do it ourselves.
This is the nitty-gritty of running soccer in Ireland. This is the base level of organisation and planning and strategic capacity needed to keep pace in the world’s most popular sport. Fixing the Irish academy system isn’t like aspiring to a better model of car that runs smoother and goes further. It’s more a case that our existing jalopy has no tyres and we are scraping around for the money to buy some. Even when we get them, we’ll still be miles behind everyone.
Which is why the past six months have been such an unmitigated disaster for the FAI. This can’t be fixed without years of sustained government investment. With the double whammy of Hill’s demise and the manager fiasco, the FAI couldn’t have picked a worse time to be revealed as looking like the least safe bet any government could make.
Canham’s video last week, the non-update update on the managerial search, did the apparently impossible by making things worse. Up to now, Canham has been viewed as a smart guy in the background, professional and savvy, not the usual kind of FAI dissembler. And then he went and spoiled it all by opening his mouth in public and now his reputation lies in ashes.
It’s all such deeply unserious behaviour. One minute Canham is laying out the strategic plan for the coming decades, the much-trumpeted Football Pathways Plan that is going to rely on a completely new funding relationship with the exchequer to come to fruition. The next he is doing a video with Cathal Dervan saying he hopes John O’Shea will take the Ireland team for the upcoming friendlies – without having confirmed it with O’Shea first.
How can they not get it? How has the penny not dropped that every minute they spend bringing public ridicule upon themselves is a minute further away from rescuing a sport that Irish people love, one whose guardianship is their responsibility? From where do they get the arrogance to be so blithe and casual with the future of the game here?
There are nine full-time professional footballers in Ireland who are aged either 17 or 18. This is going to get worse before it gets better.
I think Clerkin gets at this point but Hill and Canham can't be treated as separate entities to Clarke and Robinson - which is incredibly unfortunate for Clarke, Robinson and the rest of us.
Hill has set Irish football back years. Canham can't run a managerial appointment process to save his life. If there are clowns running something, you'd expect it to be a circus. Who would trust them with money?
Crikey. I know there's issues in there I've spoken about before - specifically that we need to stand up for ourselves now and stop thinking sending kids abroad is a solution - but that's stark. I kind of hoped we were coming to the bottom of the barrel with a recent uptick in players coming through, though they're still far from the finished article yet (often 3/4 years after making their debuts).
But maybe not
There is a caveat in that the figure doesn't include players who are still in school. One of the positives of not shipping 16 year olds to England is that they can pursue football and complete an education at home. I'd be interested in the figures including players still completing their education that might be on the books with full time teams.
Tallaght Stadium Regular
That's a good point. It can't be a bad thing socially that kids are finishing secondary school at least. I guess it leads to two follow-on questions: (1) what are the stats like for 18-19 year olds? (2) Do players who finish school have an advantage or disadvantage over players who are training full time from their early or mid teens?
I don't think the latter question is as obvious as it might seem: the obvious answer seems to be that training has to be good, right? There are stats that say college students who live at home outperform those who are renting a room. I think it's credited to the mammy effect: the kid gets looked after and is generally encouraged to focus on their studies. Maybe a rake of teenagers staying home and training part time until they get their leaving cert is actually pretty positive.
There's no positive spin to put on how few coaches we have though. That's just setting ourselves up for failure.
But then you can't spell failure without FAI.
I think while it's generally acknowledged that players leaving their home country early has a negative impact (so in that regard Brexit is actually good), there's been plenty of criticism of our academies for having much less training hours, much less ball time, etc. I think it's not far off some volunteers taking coaching twice a week.
So while school is important, I'm not sure we can find any comfort if we pad the figures by including guys in part-time training
I don't know what business accounting you're familiar with but the FAI barter accounting for solidarity payments to clubs and subsequently the 'accounting' from clubs re the received solidarity payments for development would not pass muster, there is no evidential entry/exit in the current accounts. Also Clubs are required to show accounting evidence that solidarity payments have been invested in development.
Re self interest, when the FAI are the receiver of the solidarity funds from UEFA and they don't dole it out to the clubs as per UEFA criteria, self interest becomes a question. For instance, it's in the self interest of the FAI to impose fines to clubs for this and that 'misbehavior,' because that fine will be deducted from the solidarity payment towards that club and the FAI can use that money to fill a tiny particle of their huge hole.
It's quite simple really to open an archive link, in this day and age it's an impossibility to be subscribed to every media outlet, if so then https://archive.ph/ is your man.
You don't have to actually write a cheque or make an EFT payment to have money correctly recorded in your accounts though.
The rest of your argument falls apart from that one basic premise
Last edited by pineapple stu; 01/05/2024 at 10:52 PM.
I do find it hard to reconcile those figures with for example that u15 side I saw about a year ago (now u16s). Across the two games, about 18 players really impressed. And overall 19 of the 23 players were LOI based. Admittedly all 4 of the non-LOI lads were impressive (Finneran at Blackburn, Martos at Almeira, McDonnell at Vancouver and McMahon Brown at Burnley).
How can we produce so many promising players at u15 and be doing such a bad job at 17s or 19s or whatever
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