The FAI is hoping that Tuesday’s meeting of Uefa stakeholders will provide it with some degree of certainty with regard to Ireland’s Euro 2020 playoff game and the staging of the tournament itself. As things stand, it is clear that the trip to Bratislava cannot go ahead and there is next to no prospect of the European Championships being staged in this calendar year.
The interests of associations like Ireland’s, though, will not be the top priority as the European federation, its biggest leagues and richest clubs look to redraw the calendar so as to minimise the losses that will be incurred as a result of the current coronavirus pandemic.
Quite how much can actually be achieved during what is being billed as a conference call involving all 55 member associations, as well as Uefa itself and representatives of the leagues, clubs and players, is open to question and it is hard to imagine that key elements of the agenda will not have already been resolved before the first remote connection is made in the lead-up to midday.
Despite some talk of a proposal to stage the Euros at the end of this year, they look set to be pushed back into the summer of 2021 which may well have knock-on consequences for both the Women’s European Championships and the newly enlarged World Club Championships, a Fifa project the timing of which is likely to pose by far the greater challenge.
The priority, though, is widely understood to be getting this season’s club competitions finished, with Uefa anxious to deliver on its commitments to sponsors and broadcasters while reaching an agreed formula across Europe for producing next season’s participants.
Simply declaring the leagues to be finished is one option but it would inevitably meet with resistance. Making the case for handing titles to the likes of Liverpool and even Celtic is one thing given the leads they enjoy in their respective leagues, but in Italy, Juventus’ advantage over Lazio is just one point while in Spain Barca lead arch rivals Real Madrid by just two.
In financial terms, however, the bigger question really is qualification for the Champions League and the likes of Atletico Madrid, Manchester United and Roma would be unlikely to take being excluded on the basis of their current league positions well. Fourth place in the Premier League two seasons ago, it should be remembered, set Liverpool on their way to the Champions League title, something that ultimately earned them €111 million in direct payments from Uefa after which there would have been matchday revenues and bonuses from sponsors.
Moving the Euros back a year will, it is hoped, clear the way for the domestic leagues to be concluded and places in the competitions to be allocated in “a fair and equitable way”.
Clearly, Ireland’s financial interest is modest by comparison and yet there are some very significant issues of concern for the FAI and its clubs.
The rescheduling of the Euro 2020 playoffs will clearly be of interest to both the FAI and IFA, but a question that many of the smaller associations will want addressed relates to the payment of grants under Uefa’s hat-trick programme. These are intended for a range of purposes and much of the money might essentially be regarded as core funding.
The key part, though, is that while most of the money is paid in equal annual instalments, there is a single, far larger sum distributed once every four years, immediately after each European Championships when Uefa has gathered in all of its revenues from the tournament. Under the new terms of the new four-year cycle, which kicks off this year, each association is due a total of €14.1 million, with the lump sum of just over €4.5 million due, in the normal course of events, before the end of this year.
That is roughly as much as qualifying for the tournament is worth to the association net of expenses, and though the money will inevitably arrive at some point, it is hard to imagine that a delay of a year would not punch a bit of a hole in the FAI’s projections. It is hard, on the other hand, to see Uefa writing cheques for €775 million before that money has been secured.
The other issue relates to the European club competitions.
While the main focus is bound to be on getting competitions that are only currently at the round of 16 stage through to a finish at some point during the summer, possibly, it is apparently anticipated, by reducing the quarters and semis to single-leg affairs and even, it has been suggested, by staging mini-tournaments, clubs here are more likely to be looking ahead to the qualifying stages of next season’s competitions.
Those games will be worth €2 million – and potentially much more – to Irish clubs already reeling from the current crisis, and they will be anxious for reassurances that they will not be lost in the much greater mix, in the event that some or all of them cannot go ahead as originally anticipated in July and August.
There will be a great many other associations who share the Irish interests in all of this but Uefa have suggested that everyone will have to make sacrifices and it is clear that little by way of solidarity can be expected from the European game’s biggest guns.
