John Fallon: FAI need to fund modernised player pathways despite financial constraints

Ireland's Rocco Vata celebrates after scoring his side's fifth goal during the UEFA U17 Championship Qualifier match between Republic of Ireland and Andorra at Turner's Cross. Photo by Eóin Noonan/Sportsfile

What’s rare is wonderful but the big test for the FAI is ensuring what’s normal in a post-Brexit landscape is sufficient to keep pace with European peers.

In these pages last Thursday, our colleague Larry Ryan portrayed a momentous night from Turner’s Cross, where the importance of a 5-0 win over Andorra for Ireland’s U17s was trumped by the significance of a new trend.

The notion of an Ireland squad operating without a single player attached to an English club in an underage qualifier was the stuff of white coats, deemed impossible given the conditioned route for our best talent since the 1980s.

Of the 20 players selected by Colin O’Brien for the first phase of qualifiers in Cork, 17 were home-based. Caden McLoughlin (Villarreal), Rocco Vata (Celtic), and Kevin Zefi (Inter Milan) account for the trio abroad.

Nobody has been able to extract from the record books the last time an English whitewash occurred, for it was simply unheard of.

The side followed the hammering of Andorra by sweeping past North Macedonia 2-0 on Sunday, securing their passage into the elite phase with today’s final fixture of the round-robin against Poland to spare.

Before we get all nationalistic and revel in self-sufficiency, the catalyst for this sea-change must be noted.

Late last year, once the UK’s detachment was finalised, the exemption permitting clubs to recruit youngsters aged 16 from fellow European Union countries ceased. The minimum age is now 18.

Although the restriction was well-flagged from 2016 when the referendum was first passed, the general expectation was that powerful clubs would engineer some mechanism to override it.

They didn’t and, while FAI chief executive Jonathan Hill as recently as July revealed that “there’s an ongoing conversation with Fifa in relation to the wider space”, an acceptance exists that the primary destination for Irish trainees is closed for business.

It would be both unfair and premature to judge Ireland’s ability to cope with the new reality on how O’Brien’s first intake fare in this European campaign.

His previous squads reached three tournaments in a row from 2017-2019 (the latter as hosts) and the standard of opposition will spike when they enter the elite phase of qualification next March.

No, the assessment is a broader exercise.

Instead of growing their own and then exporting them, the need now is for Irish clubs to sustain and nourish players between that critical stage of 16 and 18.

Inevitably, the brightest pearls will embark on an alternative pathway beyond these shores such as Zefi to Italy and Glory Nzingo, the St Patrick’s Athletic winger snapped up by French club Stade de Reims. He’s a year too old for O’Brien’s age-group.

The vast majority will be reliant on home-based clubs matching the professional environment they’d be getting cross-channel.

A golden opportunity, it would seem for League of Ireland clubs now tasked with nurturing talent from 13, yet there’s no evidence to illustrate they are prepped to carry the burden.

Stephen Kenny was glad to embrace the topic as a deviation from talk around his future and Covid-19 vaccines in the build-up to last Saturday’s World Cup qualifier in Azerbaijan.

“Do the possibilities exist to increase the infrastructure to retain players and get to a certain level and play in European competition regularly so that we can bring them to the next level before they go to the major leagues?” he mused.

“That is the massive challenge. Obviously, that would require serious finance and big infrastructural changes around a lot of the clubs. That is a challenge for the FAI as well.”

Finance and investment. There it is again; be it the women’s development model, League of Ireland seniors, or even the little bit required for the national Futsal team to be resurrected, cash is king.

Money’s too tight to mention for the FAI but Ger O’Brien, director of football at St Patrick’s Athletic, feels that only a largesse of up to €300m over the next decade will suffice to modernise the Irish system. “In the grand scheme of things, we’re a shambles,” he told the LOI Central podcast.

With the association’s debts of €65m unlikely to diminish in the short to medium term, Leinster House is being turned to. Positive soundings of support emerged over the summer from Taoiseach Micheál Martin but the recent long fingering of the Airport Metro project demonstrated the futility of clinging onto political promises.

Regardless, depending on the state grants isn’t everybody’s panacea. Shelbourne’s Alan Caffrey, whose umbrella includes one of the best women’s teams in the country, prefers to look inwards.

“Irish football is in trouble financially but we have to find a way around it or we’ll never get around it,” said the Reds’ director of football. “We need government backing but we can’t rely on it. We’re living in a country that has been heavily affected by Covid-19 so it’s naïve to expect hundreds of millions to be pumped into football ahead of the health system and employment schemes.

“The clubs have to stand up. You hope people in the business world who love the game — yet go to Champions League matches in the UK — start to look at their local League of Ireland clubs and say they wouldn’t mind investing. A couple of clubs have those backers but others need to really push it on.”

In fairness to the FAI, they have publicly acknowledged the seismic shift necessary.

The revelation by the FAI’s recently-appointed Academy manager Will Clarke that just six of 20 LOI clubs employ a full-time director of football was as shocking as the pittance of a €10,000 subsidy they receive annually from the governing body to run national league teams at U14, U15, and U17, and U19s levels.

In a climate of scarce resources, valid questions about where the money is spent also arise. Rather than fund the salary of a coaching figurehead at each club to address the deficit highlighted by Clarke’s statistic, the FAI earlier this year chose to recruit 12 in-house high-performance coaches to cover seven regions nationwide.

The job spec read: “To solely focus on the development of elite players, coach education, and support of elite coaches in their region, progressing to the national teams and working in conjunction with the national league clubs and leagues.” As ever, the strategy proved divisive.

“It will be easier to get a united Ireland than have Irish football united,” added Caffrey about the squabbles. “We’ve all got a responsibility. Something has to be done because it isn’t working.”

Travel allowances a virtual perk for SFAI legislators

Did you hear the one about the football officials being paid travel allowance without leaving their houses?

It has emerged that legislators from the Schoolboys FAI received a €40 allowance for each virtual call they participated in during the pandemic.

Payments for travel and subsistence are commonplace across all sporting organisations, especially for centralised gatherings of personnel based across all corners of the country.

Restrictions on mobility and the gathering of people indoors over the last 18 months sent these essential forums into the virtual world, allowing delegates from leagues to log in from their devices.

Payments continued to be made despite this change but the hierarchy of the SFAI — which now encompasses the girls’ underage sector — have requested that these monies be returned upon the advice of their financial consultants.

The largest affiliate under the FAI’s auspices had in recent years made a settlement with the Revenue Commissioners following a voluntary disclosure over honoraria.

The era of remote meetings may be over after the relaxation of restrictions in tandem with the vaccination rollout. The FAI is about to kick off a blitz of “townhall meetings” with constituents, geared to invite feedback on the strategic plan for 2022-2015.

Peas coming to the boil for league title run-in

Peamount United require a maximum of eight points from their final four games to rack up a third successive Women’s National League title.

James O’Callaghan’s side begin their run-in on Sunday at Athlone Town, followed by meetings with Cork City and DLR Waves before they conclude on November 13 against Galway United.

That their nearest rivals, Shelbourne and Wexford, meet on that final day means a fewer haul of points will likely suffice to guarantee Champions League qualification again.

Ireland’s champions-elect, though, won’t be cementing their season with a double after the FAI Cup holders were knocked out at the semi-final stage by Wexford Youths last weekend.

Peamount ended a decade-long wait for the Blue Riband last year by swatting aside Cork City in the final.

Captain Kylie Murphy led the charge in Wexford’s extra-time victory, scoring either side of Áine O’Gorman’s equaliser. Lynn-Marie Grant added the third from Ellen Molloy’s assist.

Wexford will have to get past Noel King’s Shelbourne in the final.

The decider has been switched out of the Aviva Stadium to Tallaght for a second season running and will be played to a finish on Sunday, November 21.