Blatant cash grab by the FAI. It's the only reason they got rid of Stan, because they knew the fans would stay away from Croke Park if he was still manager. The size of the crowd against Cyprus was all too telling.
That said, you only get better playing against teams that are better than you. Argentina, Italy, and Brazil certainly fit the bill.
Friendlies against Brazil, Argentina and Italy and people are complaining
I think the FAI will be looking at getting some revenue, getting the fans interested again, and giving the new manager 3 games to work with his players without feeling too much pressure regarding results, as in nobody will complain too much if, or more likely when, we lose all three.
Wont loose all three. Guaranteed we always play better against better quality opposition!!
Pal, do you engage your brain before the fingers start typing? Your'e not by any chance one of that rent-a-mob that paraded around with placards saying no to foreign games at Croke Park dressed in Celtic gear?Originally Posted by jmurphyc
You obviously have no idea about how football in Ireland is financed. Anyone who does not applaud the FAI for attempting to bring the 3 top ranked teams in the world to Dublin definitely belongs in the 'bedgrudger' camp.
FFS, cop on to yourself man!
Honest! I am not a secret Tim nor a closet Sham - I really am a Seagull.
I'd like a couple of away friendlies as well. It would be great to have 3 of the top teams in world football coming here. Frankly I was expecting a Canada or Tunisia to be tied in with Brazil.
The GAA have already sanctioned friendlies for football and autumn tests for rugby.
i can understand the whole financial thing, but surely we should have at least one away friendly? I seriously think instead of a **** up in june in the states or something, that is the time we should be heading to eastern europe andplaces like that. I seriously think a game in late may or early june against a team preparing for euro 08 (someone like sweden, or even austria or switzerland) would be ideal and is something that needs looked at.
big money home friendlies are definitely a financial necessity, but squad preparation also needs to be addressed, because lets remember qualification for major tournaments is also financially beneficial to the fai, including increased gate revenues for games before and after due to the interest created. I know my fandom is largely due to the success at italia 90 (when i was 6) and even moreso the 1-0 over italy in 94.
I would presume this will be the case. The FAI will been keen to play the home qualifiers in Landowne, and playing the away matches first gives us the best chance of doing that.
It would probably be advantageous from a footballing point of view to get them out of the way early on. The 2 away draws in Holland and Portugal gave us the springboard to qualify in the 02 campaign. Having the stadium underway gives us a great excuse to insist on this when the negotiations over fixture scheduling take place
if anything, we are likely to have the big nation home games early and the littler ones later, when we move back to lansdowne. if anything, the fact we will be moving to a smaller stadium during (hopefully) the campaign means we will have the big games at croker earlier and the littler ones at lansdowne later. no?
I expect they will want to showcase Lansdowne Road with the big games if they can.
I would also assume there will be more revenue generated by playing at the new LR rather than at CP. If not, what is the point of the FAI being involved in the new LR?
Honest! I am not a secret Tim nor a closet Sham - I really am a Seagull.
1) they can't afford their own stadium
2) croker costs 1m to rent at the minute, and the difference in capacity between lr and croker is around 20,000. 20,000 x e50, which equals, you guessed it, e1m.
and
3) lets not forget croker is only being opened for a limited time period
one thing i'm not sure though is whether the fai will continue to pay the irfu rent at lansdowne, cos they are stumping up a big chunk of cash, and probably more than originally budgeted for, because steel prices have risen quite a bit more than inflation in the last couple of years.
note: the welsh and slovak games had 71,000 odd attendances and they were full houses according to soccernet and wikipedia, and the figures from the lrsdc.ie website quote future capacity as 50,000, which is where i'm getting the figures.
edit: i have another point. the fai are selling 10,000 ten year premium level tickets for lr at 10,000e a go. their contribution to the new lr is less than 100m, therefore present revenue is not needed to pay for lr, this revenue alone will pay for lr.
more irish fans can attend and more funds are raised.
Was he crazy!! Yeah , in a very special way , an Irishman.
I slept, and dreamed that life was Beauty;
I woke, and found that life was Duty.
Very articulate way to start your post. I was actually unsure of whether I should post my earlier message as I realise that there is a certain extent of hyperbole in it, which I'm sorry if you didn't realise but I think you'll find that my other posts in this thread are more reasonable.
I think you'll find that I've briefly gone into this in other posts on the thread. If the FAI add, say, 2-3 away friendlies against teams more at our level then I will re-evaluate my post. But I still think that they are playing three games against the some of the top teams in the world is a bit too much. How will this affect the new manager and the development of his squad? What if we go into the qualifiers with a record of say 7 games or more without a victory (it's currently at 4)? The media will almost certainly pick up on this and it could potentially affect the players.
All this is rather besides the point though. In answer to your question I doubt the FAI will use this money to develop the new Lansdowne Road. They will be paying for this for some time to come, and they already probably had a payment plan set up.
They are probably using the new premium seats and box seats (10,000 and 1,300 respectively) to pay for the new stadium. Looking at www.lrsdc.ie they will need to pay back roughly 87,500,000 euros (the costs will probably rise to 100,000,000 million euros once building is finished). The premium level seats alone cost 10,000 euros I believe, so this is what they will probably be using to pay for the majority of the stadium redevelopment. If they were planning to use these games to pay for the redevelopment then they could have serious problems; what if they don't get enough people in the stadium? It would be very foolish to use these games to pay for the redevelopment as things could potentially go wrong.
I understand that they have to maximise revenue, and John Delaney has clearly done a very good job in regards to this (the media reported that the FAI had made 10,000,000 euros for the Germany game). This, plus the amount we made for the other games should help to acquire the funds for a good manager. As far as I'm concerned, we don't need three top class teams to come to Dublin.
If Delaney really cared about the current team's fortunes and the fans that much then why didn't he get rid of Staunton earlier? It was obvious to everyone bar the FAI what was coming and he acted completely unprofessionally IMO by denying there was any booing in Prague. He should have come out and tried to appease the fans instead of just downright lying about it.
I'm sorry for the long-winded reply, but I didn't like the tone of your reply to my earlier message, and was merely defending my beliefs, which I don't think are that unreasonable.
I don't argue just for the sake of arguing, I merely expressed my views quite vehemently in that post without a reasonable explanation. If you want to understand why I said that then please read my other posts as I'm not just some babbling idiot.Pal, do you engage your brain before the fingers start typing? Your'e not by any chance one of that rent-a-mob that paraded around with placards saying no to foreign games at Croke Park dressed in Celtic gear?
You obviously have no idea about how football in Ireland is financed. Anyone who does not applaud the FAI for attempting to bring the 3 top ranked teams in the world to Dublin definitely belongs in the 'bedgrudger' camp.
FFS, cop on to yourself man!
I'm not going to be so arrogant as to say that I undrerstand completely, but I understand to some extent how football in Ireland is financed. I know that it's quite difficult for international associations in particular to finance projects due to the lack of options available in terms of revenue as they have hardly any matches per year to help them out. In regards to the 3 top ranked teams coming to Dublin, please read my above post for my opinion.
BRAZIL have revealed they will play a friendly against the
Republic of Ireland in Dublin next February.
The fixture at Croke Park was announced in a statement on the Brazilian Football Confederation website.
The CBF statement said: “The Brazilian national team will play next year’s first international friendly on February 6 – date set by FIFA – against
the Republic of Ireland in
Dublin.
“The game will be played at Croke Park Stadium, which has 82,300 seats available.”
Tommy is that you in chicago?
I expect there to be a lot of brazillians at that match when ye consider the amount in Gort and Roscommon town alone. There must be around 5 - 10k in total in ireland....
I'm a bloke,I'm an ocker
And I really love your knockers,I'm a labourer by day,
I **** up all me pay,Watching footy on TV,
Just feed me more VB,Just pour my beer,And get my smokes, And go away
Chicago?
I only started this thread as my Italian sources suggesting a game was on the cards.
I can't see us developing any further from sticking another 4 past Denmark and 3 past Sweden, who are presumably the kind of opposition some of you guys would like to see us play. We have shown we can do that in 3rd gear in friendly games. The higher standard may let us learn something about the players we have, and how they can cope with being up against it.
Plus, this is the best preperation possible for the challenges the new regime will face in South Africa
Is a match against Italy, subject to us avoiding getting them in the WCQ?
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