The Republic of Ireland’s qualification playoffs for what was to have been Euro 2020 have been provisionally rescheduled for June this year but the FAI’s interim deputy chief executive Niall Quinn has admitted that both that and Uefa’s wider plan for getting club competitions across the continent finished by the start of the summer must be regarded for the moment as “aspirational”.
As Dublin was supposed to play a part in hosting the European Championships this summer was postponed for a year, the FAI’s interim deputy chief executive has also acknowledged that the association is not well placed to go looking for additional public money at a time the economy is being devastated by the financial effects of the coronavirus pandemic.
On the bright side, the Euros will now coincide with the centenary of the association here, but it is a rather thin silver lining to a very large cloud.
Quinn expressed regret that the revenues the tournament was to have brought into the country will not now arrive until the summer of next year and confirmed that the jobs of more than 20 people employed here by Uefa to organise the Irish end of the tournament are in doubt, with the European federation stating that there will be a consultation process over the coming weeks.
Asked about how the association might tackle the thorny issue of who should manage Ireland at next year’s finals in the event that the team gets through the playoffs, Quinn essentially said that there was little point worrying about it before it is known whether there is actually a problem.
“We’ll know on June 10th [whether the team has qualified] and I would have thought that June 10th would be a good time to start worrying or overly worrying about that,” he observed in an interview with for the association’s own social media platforms, including its YouTube channel, FAI TV.
Quinn was reacting to confirmation from Uefa after a meeting with its 55 member associations and representatives of other stakeholders, including leagues, clubs and professional players, that the Euros are, as had been widely expected, to be deferred for 12 months. The new dates for the tournament will be June 11th 2021 until July 11th.
Despite suggestions that at least one host city might drop out, the format of the tournament is to be unchanged and tickets for the rescheduled games will be honoured or, if supporters want to get their money back, refunded over the coming months.
After the announcement, Uefa president Aleksander Ceferin acknowledged that the current crisis made proceeding with the tournament impossible and said that “we need to think about the health of the fans and players . . . about football as a whole.”
The hope is to have all of the season’s domestic leagues, as well as the two big European club competitions, concluded by the end of June even if this required a considerable amount of flexibility with scheduling.
A working party has been established to decide on the detail, as well as to make recommendations as to how the Women’s European Championships, the Nations League and the Under-21 European Championships can be best incorporated into the new calendar. Fifa’s first edition of the enlarged Club World Cup will also be put back by at least a year.
Quinn admitted that those elements of the plan to be actually implemented by June, including the new dates for Ireland’s game in Slovakia and any playoff final after that, cannot be relied upon given the scale of the current crisis.
“The reality is the Government and HSE will probably decide if these dates work or not. Let’s hope they do, we’ll focus on that at this particular time until we hear differently.”
It is, he said, nice that the staging of four games here will now coincide with the association’s centenary but, he admitted, “it’s a blow to lose out by a year [and] it’s also a blow to the hospitality sector and the exchequer.
“We had hoped to make amends for the help we have been given but it’s just been put out for a year. We’re going to emphatically roll up our sleeves for what will be another long process to make sure we can turn it around and that everything building up to 2020 can be switched seamlessly to 2021.”
The former Ireland international was less upbeat with regard to the problems that the current suspension of Irish sport presents for the professional game here. The association has been working with clubs and the players’ union, the PFAI, on the making of a case for help with paying wages, but Quinn acknowledged that there will be a great many people knocking on the same doors.
“It’s difficult for players but when you take a peep outside football and see the devastation, talk of 200,000 being let go this week, it’s a nationwide problem. It’s awful, I think every business in the land is looking for assistance so it may be that players fall into line with the Government scheme that was announced a couple of nights ago.” The league is “unlikely,” he suggested, to be up and running again in the next couple of weeks.
The approval of the FAI’s new deal with Bank of Ireland, he said, will allow the association to pay clubs any money they are owed from last season and it is widely expected that affiliation fees will be waived. But the ongoing absence of gate receipts and other revenues will leave most facing a struggle to survive if the crisis proves to be a prolonged one. Clearly, it will be a common enough condition.
