FAI facing €750,000 players bill for internationals
FAI facing €750,000 players bill for internationals
DAMIEN DUFF may never get to wear the green of Ireland at Croke Park if top European clubs succeed in winning compensation for the release of players for international duty.
A high-powered FAI delegation visited Brussels yesterday to warn EU officials and Irish MEPs about the serious consequences for soccer in Ireland if they had to face a bill of €750,000 for players' wages every time the senior international team played a game.
"Having to play three-quarters of a million euro at today's wages everytime we play an international match is simply not sustainable," said FAI chief executive John Delaney.
"The €10m which we invest in the grassroots would be put at risk and it would mean that our star players might not get to play for their country."
With Croke Park about to be given UEFA's five-star standard it could eventually mean that the only time Ireland's top players actually get to play a competitive game in Dublin would be if their clubs reached a Champions League final at GAA headquarters.
Some of Ireland's current internationals are among the top earners in the English game with Damien Duff earning around €100,000-a-week at Chelsea, while Tottenham's Robbie Keane and Manchester United's John O'Shea would be paid approximately €50,000 per week.
The FAI currently pays an insurance premium of €60,000 per game which covers each player's wages for up 26 weeks should they get injured while playing for their country.
But G14, the lobby group for Europe's top football clubs, is angry that clubs have to continue paying players wages while they are on international duty and is unhappy that profits which FIFA and UEFA make from the World Cup and European Championships goes to associations rather than clubs.
Former German international striker Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, who is both chairman of Bayern Munich and vice-chairman of G14, said: "The legal analysis we have asked for concludes that we have to release our players but we don't have to do it for free."
They are also backing Belgian club Charleroi, who this week sued FIFA in the Belgian courts for compensation after one of their players was out for eight months after being injured in an international match.
That case is expected to go all the way to the European Court of Human Rights and the ruling is likely to have widespread implications for the international game which is why Delaney, FAI director of strategy Declan Conroy and FAI planning and development director John Byrne were in Brussels.
With the help of Fianna Fail MEP Eoin Ryan, they were able to meet Ireland's European Commissioner Charlie McCreevy, EU Director of Sport Pierre Mairesse and the vice-president of the European Premier Football Leagues, Jean Marie Phillips, as well as the Irish MEPs.
The message to all was short and to the point.
"We told them that although G14 may want to be paid for the use of players they are forgetting where those players came from. It was at the grassroots that their talent was nurtured and developed by volunteer coaches and it is the grassroots which will suffer if associations like the FAI have to start paying the players' wages," said Delaney.
"G14 also seem to forget that playing international football increases the capital value of players and also increases their merchandising values. The game's superstars owe their fame to the profile they receive from playing international football. G14 cannot have their cake and eat it."
At today's huge salaries, the FAI estimate that it would cost them €750,000 per game if they had to pay clubs compensation for the release of international players.
Last year Ireland played nine internationals which would work out at €6.75m - around 30 per cent of the FAI's annual turnover.
"Having to pay this money would leave us with two options. We could either slash the amount of money we spend on the development of the game or else we don't use our star players.
"Neither option is desirable so it is a catch 22 situation," said Delaney.
