Michael O’Neill’s €2.5m IFA deal shines spotlight on FAI discussions

The new €2.5 million deal secured by Michael O'Neill from the Irish Football Association, some four months after his Northern Ireland side completed the Euro 2016 qualification campaign as group winners, has provided a reminder of how strong a successful manager's hand is at a time that the FAI has yet to confirm Martin O'Neill has agreed to extend his own contract.

The former Shamrock Rovers manager is set to almost double his money from £275,000 (€351,000) per year to £500,000 (€638,600) a year and while the Republic of Ireland boss is not believed to be targeting a percentage increase of that sort of order, he too looks to be on course or a substantial pay rise from his roughly €1 million salary.

The FAI is believed to pay just €400,000 of the combined €1.3 million O'Neill and Roy Keane receive between them with the balance provided by Denis O'Brien.

The latter’s support has saved the association millions since it was agreed prior to Giovanni Trapattoni’s appointment but the downside is that the sort of pay rises now being envisaged would hit the organisation disproportionately unless O’Brien agrees to foot most of the additional bill too.

Not outlandish

The scale of Michael O'Neill's success, however, highlights the strength of the incumbent's hand after a successful campaign. Having paid Nigel Worthington almost as much as O'Neill's revised salary, the money is not outlandish by IFA standards, although the 46-year-old will become their best paid manager ever. The organisation was keen to limit the deal to a further two years but they have simply had to acquiesce in the end to the former midfielder's demand for a contract of twice that duration for fear of losing him.

Crucially, that will get him through to the end of the next European Championship qualification campaign when there will again be 24 places at the finals on offer, almost twice as many as the 13 European sides that will progress to the World Cup in 2018.

The scale of Michael O’Neill’s achievement to date is hard to overstate, however; even using the Euro 2016 qualification criteria every time, Northern Ireland would have made just two play-offs over the course of the last 10 major championships dating back to Euro 96 while the Republic would have qualified automatically six times and completely missed out on just two occasions. The extent of the team’s improvement has clearly made him more marketable and, as part of his new deal, the IFA will be entitled to compensation of 18 months’ salary in the event that he leaves in order to take up another post.

Salvaged

Martin O’Neill, meanwhile, who is in Ireland over the next couple of days, may not have exceeded expectations to quite the same extent but it is clear his reputation has been enhanced, particularly for the way in which he and his players salvaged what looked to be a distinctly unpromising position in the way of the home draw with Scotland in June.

The Scots’ subsequent slip-up in Georgia certainly helped the Irish cause but solid performances against the group’s lesser teams, the defeat of Germany at home and then the near textbook play-off victory against Bosnia and Herzegovina ensured that the team secured their qualification on quite a high and O’Neill is bound to feel that the achievement will not have gone unnoticed in England.

Just how much that ends up costing the association (and/or O’Brien) remains to be seen but with managers’ contracts generally running until the end of qualification campaigns so as to strengthen the association’s hand in the event that things have not gone so well, a significantly improved deal is generally seen as an inevitable part of the cost of qualification and the cash windfall that accompanies it.

The former Celtic and Leicester City boss has, in any case, repeatedly said that he wants to stay beyond the summer and has spoken of his desire to bring new players through, particularly more that were born here. To date, this has proven to be a challenge although Alan Judge is widely expected to make his senior international debut next month when Ireland host Switzerland then Slovakia.