Hardball: The name of the contract game

DENIS O’BRIEN and John Delaney were “too busy” savouring the moment at the Aviva Stadium on Tuesday night to speak of things so foul as contracts and dig-outs, but both were aware they were only delaying the inevitable.

The millionaire businessman was seen in the environs of the stadium’s presidential suite chatting with the FAI chief executive and if their conversation was superficial on this occasion, it will be super serious the next time they meet.

Amid the presumption that Giovanni Trapattoni will sign a two-year extension to his €1.6m a year contract — a ‘formality’, he declared yesterday, there always lurks the complication of hardball and who’s playing it. Will O’Brien be as generous with his portion of the Italian’s salary next time out and has Delaney the same manoeuvrability with the manager if O’Brien’s not? With the chief executive’s eyes swimming with euro signs, will he struggle to convince the manager that he, like many FAI staff, will have to take another pay cut before terms are agreed on a new contract?

Delaney was panned by some media for picking up a bar tab for Irish fans in Tallinn last week, more for the optics than the act — as the association continued a redundancy programme at Abbotstown around the same time. While he must be cognisant of those concerns, he can hardly deny that Trapattoni merits appropriate remuneration for an outstanding job.

Has Trapattoni’s bargaining position — something he was desperately and somewhat pathetically trying to muscle up in recent weeks — suddenly been strengthened on the basis that the FAI would be slaughtered if they let our favourite Italian cat out of the bag? If Delaney and the Irish public didn’t know already that they’d hooked the big one when he landed Trap and his lieutenant Marco Tardelli, the whole world now knows.

Delaney says he is frequently asked at UEFA and FIFA gatherings how tiny Ireland managed to convince one of the game’s most decorated managers to jack his comfortable lifestyle with Red Bull Salzburg in Austria to come here. Doubtless he enjoys the telling of the tale more with each passing month.

Who would be Plan B? There isn’t one, least not one beyond the usual suspects of Tardelli himself, Martin O’Neill and perhaps Guus Hiddink, who left Turkey yesterday, but who comes with a hefty price tag.

One could never say relations between Trap and Delaney have been strained by the recent posturing over the contract but the Italian may or may not look quizzically at the chief executive when he is asked to take less after doing more than any manager since Jack Charlton.

We stress ‘may’. He may and should also be mindful of the social and economic environment of the country and take his medicine — such as it would be on over a million a year.

The talk is that negotiations will start around €1.1m per annum, with Delaney seeking to ink the deal with the minimum time delay, depending on the O’Brien contribution.

Not by the way, that the pair will eye each other across a table. Trap and Tardelli’s negotiations are conducted by their joint legal adviser.

Delaney will be looking to get a push on because the last thing he needs at the draw for the Euro finals on December 2 in Kiev is Trap in one corner of the room surrounded by Irish writers and Delaney in the other, stressed at the reminder that Ireland know their opponents but not their manager for Euro 2012.

All things going well for Delaney — and the ball is rolling for him at the moment — the conversation with O’Brien may be short and sweet, but the chief executive will have to secure the rubber stamp from the FAI board membership before talks with the Italians commence.

A new two-year contract would take Trapattoni and Tardelli up to the end of qualifying for the 2014 World Cup in Brazil.