Time to bring in an Irish Super League
IT’S time to talk about the Super League. No, not that one, rather an Irish Super League. Instead of the Euro elite breaking away to inflate their wealth, the moment has come for Irish football to re-examine the mutual benefits of the needy clubs on this island getting back together.
This is not a cartel carve-up for Croesus and his chums; it’s all about survival for the League of Ireland and the Irish League.
The catalyst for change arrived via the proposed European Super League (ESL), which soared like a comet only to crash and burn inside 48 hours. If the mega-rich clubs can engage with each other about new financial horizons, why can’t those a little lower down the pecking order get together for a chin-wag, too?
There couldn’t be a more opportune moment to do so as June 1 marks the 100th anniversary of the split in Irish football when the Leinster Football Association broke away from the ruling Belfast-based body and formed the Football League of the Irish Free State.
As a further pointer, the world is beginning to spin on a more normal axis as vaccinations increase and Covid-19 cases fall.
Come the autumn, fans should have returned to football, at club and international level.
Ahead of that restart, this is a critical moment to assess the status of each league and how it might improve by re-aligning as one.
One simple yardstick is European advancement.
In the Republic, Dundalk (twice) and Shamrock Rovers (once) have reached the group stages of the Europa League, all since 2011. In the North, no club has got that far.
With six of the eight Euro-bound clubs heading for the less exciting Europa Conference in the summer, cracking the Europa League code has become that much more difficult.
As for any Irish club ever competing in the group stages of the Champions League, it won’t happen in my time but it shouldn’t be dismissed as a complete pipedream.
The enlightened All-Island League proposals of Kerry businessman Kieran Lucid, which remain on the table, protected the current eight places reserved for UEFA competition, four apiece for the League of Ireland and Irish League.
IT was why the clubs were broadly in favour, as Euro qualification means one thing: money. The notion of losing those passports to riches is anathema to the clubs but it may have to be considered if a fully-fledged Irish Super League is to be taken seriously.
The Lucid plan predicted far greater income streams, chiefly from international broadcasting rights, which would go a long way to compensate clubs for missing out on Euro places.
A new Irish Super League (ISL) wouldn’t be for the foolhardy or cautious. It would have to involve concessions, such as Irish League clubs switching from a September-May season to March-November.
Many privately accept this should have happened by now as Irish League clubs are undercooked for Euro competition in mid-July, unlike their League of Ireland counterparts.
I’d imagine a top tier, say Super League 1 of 10 clubs, five from either league, contesting a 36game season.
Super League 2 would also involve 10 clubs playing a similar schedule with promotion and relegation factored in.
Below that, you could have two regional sections, Super League North and Super League South. Ten clubs apiece would be plenty which would mean four missing out.
For an island with a population of 6.8 million, do we need 44 senior clubs? England and Wales, with a population of 60 million, sustains 92 professional clubs.
Fine-tuning eligibility for Super League 1 membership won’t be straightforward but would factor in current, and historical, success.
Of the top 10, Shamrock Rovers, Linfield, Bohemians, Glentoran and Dundalk would fulfill whatever criteria is needed for five of the places.
The ISL Cup could tie a bow on the season with the final to be played in Belfast or Dublin depending on the sides involved. Of course, there might be casualties along the way, such as the traditional December 26 fixture between Linfield and Glentoran.
But life isn’t always fair, as we witnessed with the greed of the ESL’s ‘Dirty Dozen’.
UEFA’S announcement of a revamp of the Champions League and Europa League for the summer of 2024 gives the FAI and IFA three years to work with the key stakeholders on a plan to drag Irish club football into a bright new world. Wouldn’t it benefit everyone to have a competitive, commercially successful, Irish Super League, contested in modern stadia by teams capable of flexing their muscle in Europe? Of course, it would. Just as a higher standard of domestic football would provide a platform for players to progress to the senior international teams, whose respective fortunes could do with a jab in the arm right now. Relations between the two associations are a lot more robust and trusting than they were 100 years ago, and they are working closely together on the joint 2030 World Cup bid from Britain and Ireland. As they do so, an Irish Super League should be part of the conversation.