FAI trying to find way to break it gently

SOCCER:THE NEED to settle on a way of selling to the "football family" the departure of a man many still regard as a national hero for his role in the country's most successful international team may go some way towards explaining the continuing reluctance of the FAI to confirm what everybody seems to know at this stage: Packie Bonner will soon be leaving his post as FAI technical director.

And one possible justification – the need to eliminate duplication at senior management level in the association’s technical department – appeared to be undermined yesterday when it was suggested someone other than high performance director Wim Koevermans might take on Bonner’s responsibilities when the Donegal man departs.

It had been widely assumed Koevermans’ influence at the helm of a department already rocked by this week’s redundancies and threatened with quite a few more over the next year or two given the high percentage of positions funded or organised in conjunction with FÁS or local authorities, who have major funding issues of their own, would be consolidated when Bonner departs, possibly to a role designed to cushion the blow and spare the organisation’s blushes.

It seems, however, that promoting someone else to the technical director role is being actively considered even as the question of precisely how and when Bonner, whose contract is up at the end of the year, departs hangs rather awkwardly in the air.

“There are other experienced people in the department,” said one insider yesterday, “and it might be a question of somebody stepping up from there.”

Aside from Bonner’s fate, most media attention yesterday focused on the fact Giovanni Trapattoni was not being asked to share in the latest round of pain out at Abbotstown.

The Italian earns around €1.8 million a year, down by about 10 per cent from the figure in this first contract, which expired last year, half of which is paid by businessman Denis O’Brien.

The suggestion from the association appears to be that, having taken that cut last year and with his deal up for renegotiation again – or indeed termination by one party or the other – this time next year, it was not reasonable to try to rope him in at this juncture.

In the current climate, though, there may yet be external pressure for some sort of gesture to be made.

It remains unclear, meanwhile, what FAI chief executive John Delaney meant when he said he would take a “significant” cut himself and while the suggestion is clearly the reduction will be more than the five per cent levied on ordinary staff on more than €40,000, it is far less certain what elements of his €400,000-plus annual package will be affected.

The concern around Abbotstown must be, however, that with public funding for sport being cut back on all fronts, Delaney’s recent prediction that there would be a significant revival for the Capital Sports Grants scheme in 2012 effectively torpedoed by the Government’s escalating problems and the potential to grow income elsewhere looking bleak, there may be further belt-tightening before too long.

It is a scenario that will be of particular concern to League of Ireland clubs who, much as they complain about the loss of power that accompanied the merger between the league and the FAI, appreciate the parent body’s capacity to strike meaningful deals with sponsors and broadcasters.

Part of the association’s success on that front, though, has been down to the improvement in the quality of the product which, in turn, is at least partly attributable to the concentration in recent years of the country’s best players at a smaller selection of its leading clubs, due to limiting the size of the Premier League to just 10 teams.

That appears to have been a factor in the decision by the League of Ireland’s executive committee to disappoint a number of middle-ranking clubs by recommending an expansion to just 12 for the 2012 season, with a final decision due to be taken by the board of management on December 10th.

There has been support for just about every option, from sticking with the present format to changing to 12, 16 or even something involving all 22 teams from the current top two divisions. However, a reversion, once again, to the only slightly larger format will be seen as having been prompted by a reluctance to further dilute the quality of a product already badly hit by the inability of leading clubs to sustain full-time football despite pressure from those clubs currently desperate to escape the icy colds of the First Division.

If approved, the switch in format will be achieved by promoting the top two in the First Division automatically next year, and then the bottom side in the top flight will play off against the third-placed team in the First Division.

All of which will cause anxiety to the likes of Shelbourne, Limerick, Cork City, Waterford United and Drogheda United, who each would have viewed their prospects of promotion next year as a better bet had the 16-team option been adopted.