Irish soccer had a bad night at the office last night with the U19 Women’s magnificent adventure at the European Championship Finals coming to an end with defeat in the semi final against the Netherlands, and both Sligo Rovers and Dundalk coming up just short in their Europa League Qualifying matches.
The young Women can be immensely proud of their achievements in beating Spain, England and Sweden en route to the latter stages and the future looks really strong for members of the team coming through into Sue Ronan‘s national squad for a tilt at future major Championships.
Even that may have to wait a while though with the youth of this squad meaning that 12 will still be available for the next campaign with manager Dave Connell’s side.
At club level Sligo Rovers will be bitterly disappointed having taken a lead early on in their home tie against Norwegian Champions Rosenborg and moving to a 3-1 aggregate lead. It was not to last though with one first half and two second half strikes ending their hopes.
Dundalk scored a famous win against Hajduk Split in Croatia but a first leg deficit saw them tumble out too, the same fate as befell St Patrick’s Athletic on Wednesday night, depriving them of a dream tie against Celtic.
There was much talk last night of the inequality of Irish teams playing at this level.
The annual budget of St Pat’s is around €1.5 million and this was compared to their conquerors Legia Warsaw working off closer to €50 million.
If one of the teams had gone through we would be celebrating a new renaissance in the domestic game but for one goal in some cases we are back to basics of how the scales can be tilted back.
The costs of competing in Europe are significant but this is a global game and there is no cheap way of getting a panel of players and management to Belarus or Croatia on a summer evening in Thursday as Derry and Dundalk had to last night.
Rob Hartnett of Sport for Business was on The Last Word last night discussing the travel itineraries of the Premier League teams, with nine venturing to the USA, two to New Zealand and clocking up 175,000 miles between them in pre season tours.
Louis Van Gaal was bemoaning the impact on players but Man United have to work at producing a return on their €940 million ten year deal with Adidas and Chevrolet, their shirt sponsor sells more cars in Chicago or LA than it does in Lancashire.
You can listen back to the podcast of the show, and a great story about why some teams have travelled overseas since the 1940’s at the link below from 37:30.
Next week Sport for Business will look in more detail at the financial pressures faced by teams in the Airtricity Premier League and see what ideas might be generated to make improvements.
