FAI could learn to live with high-rollers

Having played their hand well while taking a fair bit of flak from certain sections of the media during the Dublin Dons saga, the officers of the FAI have been putting on an equally defiant face with regard to talk of JP McManus's European superleague ambitions.

There would appear to be a little more of an element of bluff to the association's line this time, however. In a recent statement issued by FAI president Pat Quigley, it was stated that in the event of franchises being handed out for a future superleague, the association would effectively expect to have first refusal.

In fact, such a breakaway competition would almost certainly kill off any serious hope that a team from this country might compete at the highest level in Europe in the forseeable future. With no proven track record at club level, a tiny television market and an association unable to fund the development of a major club, Media Partners, or whoever lies behind the next breakaway talk, will probably prefer to give Ireland a wide berth.

The reality of the situation is that if McManus is genuinely interested in establishing a club to compete in Europe then the current structures of the FAI and UEFA offer him the perfect opportunity and there is not a great deal which anybody in the game here could realistically do to hinder him.

To do so would, of course, be expensive, but then the figures involved would not seem prohibitive. If a suitable stadium is built (and while Eircom Park would appear to suit McManus's needs rather better, then Abbotstown, Bertie's baby, would doubtless serve well enough) all that is required is a club and players.

The club problem should be easily enough sorted out. It may be difficult to put a precise value on a controlling interest on a National League club, but the cost of taking over a First Division outfit now would be a virtually insignificant factor in the context of a project like this. A couple of years down the line, the name could be changed and the club relocated - having been so flexible with others, the FAI would be powerless to intervene.

That leaves the question of a manager and players, neither of which, at the upper end of the market, come cheap, but if another £50 million was to be set aside then it should, with the current transfer regulations, be possible to assemble a team capable of holding their own in the group stages of the Champions League.

Only the third qualifying round of the competition should present a serious hurdle to actually getting there (winning the league here, in which no club currently spends £500,000 a year on wages, should be no more than a formality).

Indeed domestic competitions could, once the club made it to the Champions League for the first time, probably be the responsibility of squad players - if things started going awry the big names could be drafted in - leaving the main stars to concentrate on the midweek games. It would actually put the club in a rather enviable position.

After the initial set-up costs, the whole venture should be more or less self-financing. This year clubs making the second group stage of the Champions League expect to gross just short of £30 million from their involvement with the competition.

Last year, Chelsea's wage bill, the largest in Britain, was around £35 million, not a terribly big gap for a club that could bank, in a way that few others on the Continent could, on being involved every year and which would enjoy a great many other commercial opportunities.

Even if things did go wrong and the Dublin-based outfit were forced to settle from time to time for a place in the UEFA Cup, the changes to that competition being proposed at present by Europe's second tier of clubs will almost certainly mean that competition being transformed into a league format soon too. It might not be as lucrative, but it would certainly soften the blow.

Of course, none of this is a new idea. It is more or less what Shamrock Rovers were talking about doing more than two decades ago. Since then, though, the numbers have changed out of all recognition and the project appears, at first glance, to be sustainable.

The FAI would be powerless to prevent this sort of project, although if the current campaign to have the EU allow the reintroduction of a quota on foreign players was successful then the whole thing would almost certainly be unworkable.

If the project did go ahead, then the association might just find that, like UEFA, they could live with big business if it was prepared to work within the existing power structures.

However, what would become of the rest of the National League clubs is an altogether different matter.