Fresh doubts in Barcelona over Limerick game

WHILE the war of words between Limerick FC and the FAI intensified over the weekend, fresh doubts about the viability of a Thomond Park visit for Barcelona have emerged with the news that the Catalans are still reviewing their options for pre-season training.

This despite Limerick’s insistence over the past few days that the two clubs were committed to the proposed July 31st game, pending a reversal of the FAI’s controversial decision to refuse permission for it to go ahead.

Reports from Barcelona yesterday say the club’s technical and fitness staff will hold a meeting this week to determine whether a training camp and match in Ireland suit them best in the face of competition from other locations.

A mini-tour of Sweden is one of the competing possibilities before Pep Guardiola’s team head to Korea for a lucrative string of pre-season matches.

Guardiola and his team’s fitness planners are influenced by the fact that the majority of the Barcelona squad will be performing in the World Cup and the coach wants to ensure his players get at least three full weeks off, even if they play in the final on July 11.

Ireland emerged as a possible venue following medical assessments in Catalunya based on the fact that Barça successfully trained in Scotland twice in recent seasons while Real Madrid reported favourably on the pre-season work they did in Ireland a year ago.

Meanwhile, FAI Chief Executive John Delaney has reiterated the Association’s position that it cannot sanction Limerick’s proposed Thomond Park game against Barcelona on July 31st.

“The game is not going to go ahead. I would love it to go ahead, but it will not be going ahead,” he said.

And clarifying, for the first time, a previous reference to third-party commercial agreements as an impediment to the game going ahead, the FAI boss said: “We have signed up an agreement with an agency that brings games into Ireland on our behalf and that restricts our ability to grant friendlies of a certain capacity. That’s what it does.

“We’re legally restricted on it. If we want to bring Manchester United in, or another club want to do so, they’ve got to ask for our permission. We wrote to the clubs a year ago to say ‘if you’re bringing in games, ask us first’.

“Another fear I’d have for this game is to get Barcelona costs a million euro, to host the game including the security, rent to Thomond Park, flying the clubs in, could be two million euro.

“So for the club to make money on it, I can’t see how it would work”

Delaney also cast doubt on the conclusiveness of the negotiations between Limerick and Barcelona.

“I don’t believe they’ve done a deal,” he said on the Marian Finucane Show. “We got an email from Barcelona in the late end of this week saying they haven’t agreed to it. I can only operate with the facts I have. The correspondence that was shown to me that we got from Barcelona (was) that they had not agreed to it, that they had not signed off on it.”

Delaney said any suggestion to the contrary, and that the game only required the nod from the FAI, was “libellous” and also criticised Limerick for their presentation of the dispute.

“(They have been) bringing the game into disrepute the way they’ve behaved the last couple of days, around the time of the opening of the stadium, on Thursday night, issuing legal letters on Friday night,” he said. “It was done in poor taste. I think the guys in Limerick have been very naive in how they’ve dealt with this.

“I got a phone call on Friday from another sports agency telling me that they are in negotiations with Barcelona for the same date in a different country. I keep coming back to it: I know the way agents operate, I know the way clubs operate, I know the way managers operate. They keep all the balls up in the air and then they make the decision that suits them best. I can only operate on the evidence that I have. I’ll just say it finally – I wish (Limerick chairman) Pat (O’Sullivan) had stuck to his promise to (Airtricity League Head of Marketing and Promotion) Noel Mooney on Thursday and come up to the meeting Wednesday. That was on the agenda along with other items for the development of Limerick Football Club. And bringing things into the public arena and issuing statements back and forth doesn’t service Irish football or Irish sport.”

Limerick and the club’s legal advisors were last night understood to be studying the FAI CEO’s comments.

Meanwhile, there are reports that Real Madrid are considering a return to Ireland this summer for the second year in a row, their pre-season schedule possibly including a friendly against St Patrick’s Athletic.