FAI 'in talks' amid Nations Cup fee row

THE FAI insisted yesterday that talks over the roughly €1.4 million owed to its Scottish counterpart, the SFA, in respect of the Carling Nations Cup, are ongoing. However it faces a battle to prevent the issue being decided by a third party as the Scots believe the 40 per cent haircut they have already taken on the fee they were due to get for participating is enough.

After news of the dispute emerged yesterday, the FAI along with the IFA and the Football Association of Wales issued a statement acknowledging the debt.

However, they both insisted they were in negotiation with the Scots with a view to obtaining “a downward adjustment of their fee to give a more equitable share of the profits to each of the competing associations based on the economic climate and ticket sales generated at the tournament”.

It is understood, however, that the SFA were originally due to have received some €2.4 million for the three games they played in Dublin, significantly more than the Welsh or Northern Irish on the basis of the number of fans each association was expected to bring and also because of their greater importance to the television deal struck for the competition.

That figure was subsequently cut by 40 per cent to the €1.4 million now at issue and the Scots believe any other further cuts would be unreasonable regardless of how the tournament fared.

There appears to have been some frustration in Glasgow too over their inability to resolve the matter ahead of the year’s end, a time when the association’s accounts for 2011 and budget for 2012 are both being prepared.

The money would, in theory, come out of a central pool of revenues for the competition but it is not clear how much money was actually generated and what if any surplus remained after operating expenses had been deducted.

The event failed to attract anything like the crowds originally talked about with between 12,000 and 20,000 attending most of the games but less than 1,000 paying into the encounter between Wales and Northern Ireland which, among other things, was the subject of a boycott by supporters from north of the Border.

Notionally at least, the event could be staged again in 2013 or 2015 with Wales pencilled in as a possible venue but that looks increasingly unlikely.

An English-organised tournament in 2013 looks to be off the agenda too with the FA apparently preferring instead to organise a number of high-profile one-off games, a series both the SFA and FAI would like to participate in.