Airtiricity League XI v Manchester United confirmed for Aviva Stadium on August 4

[PartySaint]

I've heard the argument 'Oh if it was Barcelona you wouldnt be complainig' about 4 times today, Of course i stil lwold be complaining, The opposition isnt the problem for me its the timing of the game, smack bang inbetween the league cup semi-final and a round of league fixtures on a night where our league champions might be playing in the Champions league and the night before 3 of our clubs might be playing in the Europa league is just a massive slap in the face from the FAI, Its clear from this that they dont give a toss about the league and have just bent over and let the Red Devil stick his pitchfok up their arse

[Lim till i die]

As has already been mentioned before in this thread, I'd be delighted if this led to some sort of protest from Irish football fans. It's certainly the only way I'd ever consider going to such a cringeworthy game, it'd be great if Ultras groups could put aside rivalry for a night to embarass the FAI, and confessed Man Utd super fan John Delaney, in any way.

All that happens there is you pay your money get your banners took off you and feel a bit foolish.

On an aside, how many ultras in the LoI anyone know roughly numbers wise?? I'm talking hardcore now, not big game bettys

[Jicked]

I've heard the argument 'Oh if it was Barcelona you wouldnt be complainig' about 4 times today, Of course i stil lwold be complaining, The opposition isnt the problem for me its the timing of the game, smack bang inbetween the league cup semi-final and a round of league fixtures on a night where our league champions might be playing in the Champions league and the night before 3 of our clubs might be playing in the Europa league is just a massive slap in the face from the FAI, Its clear from this that they dont give a toss about the league and have just bent over and let the Red Devil stick his pitchfok up their arse

The timing will be bad, because we play a summer season, but international games dont, and so we need a game to test out the new ground before the international team 'christens' it. That's understandable.

But we're giving the game to Man Utd. 75pc of the window lickers who buy tickets will be up for Man Utd. If a LoI XI played AC Milan, Juventus, Valencia or Bayern Munich then the FAI would have the press backing the Irish "scarppy underdogs" the whole way and would dominate the week's sporting press which will have nothing else to talk about (online, in the press, radio and TV) just as Rovers did last year (though it was earlier in the year there was no World Cup to compete with, and this game will take place well after the WC when the press will be dying to fill column inches with non-LoI related football).

The 40,000, mainly neutrals, would be dying for the LoI side to beat Valencia or whoever. Just as the huge amount of neutrals were, genuinely, delighted to see Rovers stick it to Real Madrid's superstars last year. Maybe it's just as a Rovers fan that I saw the tangible side to that performance, but for months people/barstoolers were talking of us as a real football team (as sad as that sounds), they were delighted to see a bunch of Irish lads take on a great team. People who have no interst in LoI still talk about it to me when I mention I'm a Rovers fan.

Because John Delaney is an idiot and only has 3 or 4 numbers in his phonebook, he picked Man Utd, his favourite team. This means we forego all the above benefits being spread on a league wide scale with huge national media attention, and instead get the focus of the game being on a Utd debut for 18 year old Javier Hernandez.

Of course there will be no mention of any of that in the Irish football media in the morning. Like I said, in another country that's enough for the media to start questioning where Delaney's loyalties lie. Instead we'll have in depth questioning of whether Man Utd will use their home or away kit.

[Charlie Darwin]

Has anybody thought about the players here? For most of the lads who will be picked for the Airtricity League XI, it'll be a rare chance to face up to world class opposition. You can sneer all you like about the economics of the situation and the disregard for LOI scheduling, but the players won't have to take part if they don't want to.

[Dodge]

Right then. Thats 16 people happy. Good luck to them

[bennocelt]

Look, our main problems are
1: We are next door to the 'biggest/ richest' league in the world
2: We also have to compete with the GAA and now the Rugby.
3: We only have a population of 4 million.

Positives:
1: Despite the above, we are ranked 30th out of 54 European leagues, which means we bat above our weight population wise.
2: Irish people love football, we need to figure out how to make the domestic game more attractive to punters here
3: Once you get the League of Ireland bug, watching foreign leagues on TV is a poor second.

We need to encourage people to love Irish football, rather than pretending we're British.

Thats def not true, why shud we have to do anything - if Irish people really loved the beautiful game then they would go and suppor their onw league. Live football - isnt that an incentive enough?????????????????
Irish people just love the bandwagon

[Mayo Red]

It'd be great though if LOI fans would all wear their club jersies and could fill part of the ground chanting and giving stick to all the event junkies and plastic "United fans"! The FAI would love that!

[A face]

info@fai.ie as far as I know. Don't hold your breath on a reply though.

It would be a good idea for people to highlight their opinion on the decision and maybe flag it with your clubs, outlining the possible clashes in games and player availabity issues that may arise from it.

There is still time for them to make a change, but it will never happen unless people let the FAI know how they feel. It would be great if a LOI Club played their Euro game as the first game there but thats just my opinion.

[Closed Account 2]

Why can't the national team play one of the big teams that didn't make it to the World Cup? Seeing Ireland v Croatia, Ukraine, Belgium, Turkey, Sweden or even Poland again would probably sell the ground out (given its a first fixture). There would be no danger of clashing with domestic or European qualification and it would be a chance to test a few fringe players out.

[endabob1]

Oddly I think I was at the last such event when a LOI XI played Liverpool to open the floodlights at Lansdowne many moons ago and it was then what this will be now, filled with fans of the big English team who are playing in 2nd gear because it's not competitive and players don't want to risk injury. That was (a young Billy Woods excepted) one of the worst games I've ever paid money to see.

I can't for the life of me think why the FAI would go down this road again, oh wait, it wouldn't be because it'll sell out and bring in lots of cash would it??

[Dodge]

Why can't the national team play one of the big teams that didn't make it to the World Cup? Seeing Ireland v Croatia, Ukraine, Belgium, Turkey, Sweden or even Poland again would probably sell the ground out (given its a first fixture). There would be no danger of clashing with domestic or European qualification and it would be a chance to test a few fringe players out.

The FAI want the first official international there to be the glamour Argentina game

[pineapple stu]

Correct me if I'm wrong (I was in the States at the time so I'm relying on second hand information), but weren't Rovers' home games sold out for the few weeks after the Real fixture?

I don't think anyone's answered this, and I think there's an important distinction to be made.

Firstly, Rovers were pretty much selling out Tallaght from the start (partly because it "only" had 3000 seats, and partly because of all the promotional work Rovers did in the lead up). So no, the Madrid game didn't suddenly lead to Tallaght getting sold out.

However, the main point about the Madrid game is that it brought 12000 people - let's assume they were all barstoolers - down to Rovers' ground to watch Rovers play in an event at least partly managed by Rovers. Those people could look through Rovers' shop, read Rovers' programme (did they do the programme for it?) and get some of the feeling of going to a Rovers game. Then maybe they'd be back. There also isn't the same level of Real madrid support in the country, so people weren't actively supporting Madrid against Rovers (Ronaldo aside). Rovers also got E30k (I think?) out of it.

This game has none of those facets. It'll be Manchester United "fans" going down to "their" ground to watch "their" team play against what will presumably be a weakened LoI side. These barstoolers won't be brought down to their local LoI ground, won't be watching their local LoI team, won't be giving any money to their local LoI team, won't be exposed to their local LoI team. If anything, it'll promote Manchester United, not the LoI. That's the difference.

I remember doing a bit of googling on our game against Liverpool in 95, and I found an Irish Liverpool forum which had a thread about the game. One poster posted something along the lines of "I was at that game! I remember it well; it was after that that I started supporting them." Talking about Liverpool, not UCD, of course. I expect a similar effect here; a new wave of Manchester United fans.

I'll probably watch the game on telly (maybe muted), and I'll be delighted for any UCD players involved, but this is very much a Man U promotional opportunity, not an LoI one. I think the LoI v Ireland in an unofficial international would have been a much better call (albeit still far from ideal given the problems with timing already noted).

[Dodge]

Interetingly the Indo criticised the game today. Not for "securing a money spinning multi million euro friendly" but for not including the game in their Vantage club packs.

Although they'll be given preference...

[marinobohs]

Basically this game puts us on a par with Thailand and Malaysia and other such countries which invite Man Utd/Liverpool etc over to beat an invitational XI.

Perhaps I'm wrong but I don't know of Austria, Norway, Switzerland, Denmark, Cyprus, Hungary, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Czech Republic, Romania, Slovenia, Slovakia, Poland and other countries with teams that aren't likely to dominate Europe, but have teams in direct competition with television audiences in Spain/Italy/England/Germany, lowering themselves to such an embarrassing degree.

The FAI, our national footballing governing body, basically ignore the fact we have a very competitive UEFA co-efficient league (good enough to put out teams from Russia, Scandinavia etc.) and embarass fans of football in Ireland in favour of selling 50,000 tickets to barstoolers, instead of selling 30,000 tickets by having a LoI game, or even an XI versus a team that isn't in direct comptetition with the FAI's market (i.e. not Man Utd/Liverpool/Celtic and play a prestigous foreign side, something a "small" "irrelevant" team like Shamrock Rovers were able to be a part of with huge success, to the point of being broadcast in just about every football playing country in the world....how many of you remember Thaliand XI losing by a cricket score to Spurs or whoever last yeah?)

I'm not an economics scholar, but at some stage someone at the FAI must have considered that hey, we're comparing the dregs of our product to the barstoolers wet dream that is Man Utd. If they were serious about promoting the league in this country that is suicide.

But we all know they're not. They're serious about doing whatever they possible can to get cash in the bank, even if it is to the detriment of football in this country. Just look at John Delaney is so mornonic that he thought football in Ireland would have been best served by getting our least glamrous fixtures out of the way first, to fill Lansdowne Road early on, instead of having the common sense to see that Irish football would be better served by having us qualify instead of having an extra 5,000 fans watch us beat Andorra 3-0.

In a normal country this would be enough to have Delaney's head on a platter.

Instead we should all look forward to Delaney talk about how he promoted the game in Ireland by standing behind Platini this evening in Hamburg. The pathetic Irish media will also gleefully report on the superstars like a crippled Owen Hargreaves and Fulham youth team prosepect Smalling opening the new Lansdowne Road, and focus the majority of their reports on how cool John Delaney's scarf looked on the telly, for fear of losing their press accreditation and losing the chance of asking Thomas Kuzkack what he thinks of the new stadium.

Does anyone else ever wonder what the f.c.king point is in having a League of Ireland?

As has already been mentioned before in this thread, I'd be delighted if this led to some sort of protest from Irish football fans. It's certainly the only way I'd ever consider going to such a cringeworthy game, it'd be great if Ultras groups could put aside rivalry for a night to embarass the FAI, and confessed Man Utd super fan John Delaney, in any way.

Great post Jicked, sums up perfectly how cringeworthy this game is. Would not agree with any sort of demo because it only gives credence to the Abbotstown muppets and the cretins that will turn up for this fiasco. Unless of course your lads from Oriel our BSC, Dundalks Mujahadeen and other like minded souls......*



*not to be taken seriously........... well not 100% anyway

[Real Rover]

There is actually no reason for this game to be played whatsoever, only for JD to gain a few extra euro and to see his team Man UUUU in his new completed project. The Ireland v. Argentina game seems to be the perfect way to open up the new stadium. Why tarnish it by filling the stadium with English football fans a week earlier for a pointless game?

[pineapple stu]

They need a dry run ahead of the first proper game. Same as the new Wembley opened with a game between England and Italy schoolboys.

[passinginterest]

They need a dry run ahead of the first proper game. Same as the new Wembley opened with a game between England and Italy schoolboys.

It's a strange one though as a dry run is usually at a reduced capacity, unless I missed something about capacity being limited for this.

I think you're spot on about the Rovers - Madrid match in general, the programme was produced by P1 though, but it had some decent enough Rovers stuff in it. The game definitely contributed to Rovers selling 2,700 season tickets or whatever it is this year.

Have to agree with most of the posters that this is purely a Man Utd promotion and it will have zero benefit for the League of Ireland.

[Macy]

They need a dry run ahead of the first proper game. Same as the new Wembley opened with a game between England and Italy schoolboys.

As pasing interest points out, the dry runs are usually low key games. They start small to iron out gliches that come from the stadiums being full of numpties without a clue where they're going, what to do at a match etc. It's a PR disaster waiting to happen for the FAI on that front, imo.

Still, once people get the chance to wave their green and gold scarves whilst paying the glazers debts, who am I to argue...

[endabob1]

I think it was U21's actually and it was a reduced capacity as part of getting the safety certificate, 60,000 seats. There had been a charity game before that which must have been less seats. they've done the same here in Cape Town, 20,000 40,000 and 55,000 but strangely no full capacity games before the world cup despite there being ample time.

I would have thought there would be some rugger games (as it's the IRFU's stadium) to be the actual opening games and safety certificate games. I'm assuming the Argentina & United games are the FAI's first but not the stadiums

[Dodge]

Not to mention that the rugby "dry run" is before it.