Good for the eL or not? Doesn't seem to be indicating wheelbarrows full of cash be heading the eLs way?
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from ireland.com.....
The senior game, he concedes however, looks certain to remain under-funded with National League clubs struggling to generate the sort of money they require.
"It's important to appreciate how much progress has been made. The top clubs here probably turn over around a million pounds a year which is maybe three times what they managed even three or four years ago, the Friday night scene in Dublin which is what I'd be most familiar with is very healthy and you only had to look at how superior Bohemians were to Levadia last week to see that we're finally making progress on the European front.
"But Levadia had a multi-millionaire putting in a lot of money which we don't have anywhere on that scale. I think the change of season will help a great deal," he says confidently. "We'll be taking on the GAA far more directly but I don't see that as being a problem. Ultimately, though, it will be hard to make the next step up." He dismisses the idea that that the league's longer-term progress might be undermined by the participation of a Dublin side in a breakaway European or other foreign league, insisting that he believes UEFA will retain control over the club on the continent game and that, while it does, the FAI will maintain its firm grip on the course of the game's future here.
"You can be certain that whatever's happening at European level will not be driven by Ireland," he says, "but I tend to believe that change is a positive thing and what changes we've in Europe over recent years have generally been good for us here".
He particularly welcomes the regulations issued by FIFA and UEFA this week arising out of their long-running negotiations with the EU. "I'd love to see us get to the stage where other countries stop seeing us simply as a feeder for their game but at least in this document we have something concrete laid down in terms of the minimum age at which youngsters can move abroad, the educational support they must be provided with when they get there and the levels of compensation due to clubs back here."
His frustration with the current system is all too apparent and he insists that, if adequate progress is made with the development of Campus Ireland, the FAI will have its own academy here within three to four years.
"The elite, the top 10 per cent will probably still go because, even though there aren't supposed to be any, the financial inducements are too great for many of them to turn down. But if the next 10 per cent stayed here, perhaps even after signing for an English club, and we provided them with top level coaching and expert academic support then it had the potential to have an enormous impact on the game here."
More immediately, qualification for the next World Cup would provide an enormous boost and while he quietly shudders at the prospect of meeting England in a play-off game he expressed the belief that such is the level of progress made by Mick McCarthy over the past couple of years, that the national team could well survive the final hurdle in the event that it avoids defeat against Holland ends up second in Group Two.
"We're back into the top 25 in the world on the ranking list," he says, "which is the sort of level I feel we can certainly survive at and if you look at some of the teams we might come up against, the Swedens or Romanias, there isn't a huge amount for us to fear."
If the team does make it to Asia next summer, he adds, the association will do a lot better out of it financially than on any of the three occasions under Jack Charlton.
Six months ago, meanwhile, he was confident that matters had progressed with the IFA to the point where there would be a cross-border club competition this autumn. Now, though he says he does not quite know why, the prospect looks far remote while he cannot see, even much further down the line, "what the catalyst would be," that would prompt serious talks on a single national team.
"Anyway," he asks, "would even their best player, Neil Lennon, get into our midfield? I wouldn't have thought so." All of which, he says, is for another day. For the moment the clear priority is to get on with building the association's new future while attempting to consign recent traumas to the past.
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