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The League of Ireland Draft - a proposal to keep talented Irish players at home

13/5/2014

8 Comments

 
by Declan Jordan
Picture
Recently Niall Quinn has raised the difficulties experienced by young Irish footballers going to clubs in England and the implications of this for Irish football generally in harnessing emerging talent. There are also personal implications for these young footballers. Niall Quinn has experience of being a young player going to Arsenal - signing professional forms at 17 - and also as a Chairman of a Premier League club (Sunderland) signing young Irish talent. He has suggested that Irish players should stay in Ireland until they are more mature and have completed their studies and said that he would not  advise his own son (who apparently is a good goalkeeping prospect) of signing for an English club until he is older. Quinn is quoted as saying that he would "love if we were sending players over to England like the Belgians, not at the age of 16 but at 19 or 20, when they are more mature".

Neal Horgan in the Irish Examiner raises interesting points in response to Quinn's comments. His suggestion that Irish football follow the Irish rugby model of having professional teams as an attractive alternative to the English sides is interesting but it would likely undermine the competitive balance of the domestic league unless all clubs were professional. This was tried and failed - partly due to the size of the Irish market and the preference for many Irish football supporters to follow the English game. 

He points out that for many young footballers there is no incentive to remain in Ireland at the expense of an apprenticeship with a big English club. This of course depends on whether the young player is only focused on football as a career. Of course it is very difficult for a young player to turn down such an opportunity, but that is exactly what Niall Quinn is suggesting. The proximity of England to Ireland and the tradition of young players going over to sign at a young age with English clubs means that this is a difficult problem to surmount. It has an implication for Irish football generally because these young players are lost to the Irish game and in the increasingly fierce competition for progression from youth to senior players, many talented Irish footballers do not make the grade. Niall Quinn suggests that it would be better for the future of the Irish game and the international team if players were not subject to the traditional approach of packing their bags for an English academy at 15 or 16. 

The current situation is a function of the imbalance of power between English clubs and Irish footballers and their clubs. English clubs have realised that Ireland is a cheap source of talent. There are several players in the Premier League who were signed from Irish football for very deflated fees. For example, Seamus Coleman was signed by Everton from Sligo Rovers at 21 years of age for €60,000 in 2009. This year he is the clubs player of the year and was selected on the Premier League's team of the season. It is reported that the record transfer fee between the League of Ireland and an English club is the €500,000 paid by Sunderland to Cork City for Roy O'Donovan in 2009 when he was 22 years old. This is a very low record in the context of English transfer fees.

For most Irish footballers a move to an English club is their objective. The domestic league is seen as a very poor alternative. So is  there a way to change the incentive structures or to create a scheme would retain top talent in the Irish game. One of the key problems is of course how to determine which players are the best ones. It may be possible to turn the English clubs' scouting behaviour into a tool for identifying players and their desire to identify low cost football talent into a bonus for Irish domestic football and the players themselves. These clubs have the scouting knowledge and are close to the "market" to know which player is most likely to be successful.

We can look to the US, and American Football in particular, for inspiration. Each year the top College players are drafted to the professional teams. The order of the draft is generally determined by the finishing position of the team in the previous season, so that the lowest place team chooses first and so on up to the last choice for the best placed team. This is designed to encourage competitive balance in the league. In advance of the draft (that took place last week) there is a Combine at which college players are put through their paces in front of NFL scouts and managers. A similar event could be organised in Ireland for our footballers. 

The Irish Football Draft scheme I am proposing could look as follows.
  1. Organise a Combine of talented young players in Ireland. These could be 16 or 17 year old players from clubs around the country. This will complement English clubs' ongoing scouting.
  2. Nominate 12 interested English clubs to select 2 young players each as the top prospects for drafting.
  3. These players will be available to the League of Ireland Premier League clubs to select in the format of a draft. The lowest club (or newly promoted club) chooses first and so on up to the league winners. Then there is a second round in the same order.
  4. These players will be given three year contracts with the clubs that drafted them co-funded by the FAI and the English club that nominated them.
  5. During the Irish close season (which corresponds to the English league season) the players will be taken to work in the Academy of their English club.
  6. At the end of the three year the English club will have first option to sign that player on a professional contract. The transfer fee would be set at the start of the three year contract and the fee would be shared between the FAI and the Irish club. If the English club doesn't exercise its option any of the other clubs may sign the player on the same terms. 
  7. If the player is not signed his contract lapses and he is free to sign with any other club in Ireland or elsewhere.

It is likely of course that English clubs will want to sign the absolutely top young footballers to their academies without going through a scheme such as this. But for the players at a step just below that this could be an attractive proposition for those clubs with low risk and low cost.

The benefit to the English club is that they, at a low cost, get the option to sign a mature player who has gained experience of playing at a reasonably high level and has experience of their Academy. The player benefits from a contract and opportunity to play in Ireland and perhaps get a contract in the England at the end while completing their studies. Irish clubs benefit from having talented players as part of their squads for the three years of the contract and a potential transfer fee at the end of the contract. They have an incentive to develop the player as much as possible to ensure they can realise the transfer fee. 

I am sure there are unintended consequences and there may be a lot to work though in such a scheme. There may also be objections that the Irish clubs and leagues are seen to be serving the English clubs. However, the clubs and FAI can continue to complain about the drain of talent or they can do something radical to address it. Maybe new types of thinking is needed. 
8 Comments
Tony McCrossan
28/5/2014 11:39:09 am

Another misinformed article on League of Ireland football to join the countless others floating around cyberspace. Anyone with a basic understanding of micro economics can see that the league suffers from a lack of marketing. The demand functions of taste and expectation are a serious problem for those of us trying to encourage others to support Irish clubs!

Reply
Gerry Hand
28/5/2014 12:29:17 pm

Can't agree with you Tony. I believe this article could be the basis for a discussion to try and implement some of the ideas in it.
As Declan states there may be flaws he has not thought of, and plenty of them.
However I think it is a suggestion worth looking at.
He never mentions this as a way of improving the Airtrcity League, although it clearly would do that, so why you say this is a misinformed article on the LOI puzzles me, it doesn't really say much about the LOI at all apart from offering thoughts on a way to improve it.

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Tony McCrossan
2/6/2014 10:31:13 am

Apologies for using the word misinformed. Sometimes I'm guilty of getting defensive about a league I try to promote but I welcome real discussion. I would wonder how this would effect school boy teams who can get good income from selling players to foreign clubs. Why would they just allow their talent to move to League of Ireland clubs for free? Who will pay these 3 years contracts when clubs generally just pay 1 year contracts? How would this system play out for young players coming back from England after not making to grade? There are a few holes but discussion is a starting point.

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Marc Wynne
28/5/2014 03:29:29 pm

I think this is a very interesting proposal anwould like to suggest two further points. The young players drafted in should combine their football training with a formal education through local colleges which would give them a professional reward at the end in their closed course so they've something to fall back on. Secondly we shouldn't limit this to UK clubs

Reply
Declan Jordan
30/5/2014 06:33:15 am

Thanks for your comments.

@Marc I think the suggestion that the players would link up with a local college is an excellent addition to the idea. It is something that these young athletes tend to lose out on when they travel to England at too young an age. My suggestion that it would involve English clubs was purely for logistical reasons as there are already many links with those clubs. There's no particular reason the sponsoring clubs have to be English.

@Gerry You're right that the proposal is not designed specifically to improve the League but that could be a by-product. It can't help to have good quality younger players involved with our clubs. I'm sure there are several unforeseen consequences I haven't considered (why they're called unforeseen I suppose).

@Tony You are right that there is a lack of an effective marketing campaign for the League. Previous attempts, in my view, have been too disjointed, sporadic and defensive. Rather than selling the League they almost criticize fans for not going. I hope the piece isn't misinformed as I'm a lecturer in economics (including microeconomics) with a PhD in economics and surely an honorary doctorate in pain and suffering watching Limerick FC struggles for 25 years now.

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John Jordan
30/5/2014 07:59:50 am

Not wishing to sound materialistic but the fact that Colemans club got £60k is immaterial to the player. He is now earning the national average wage in Ireland per week in the UK. That is the temptation, and why the young players will take the very risky move to the UK. The analogy of rugby is not fair as the salaries in Ireland compare in most cases to England. Equally the advise of multi millionaire Dad Niall Quinn to his "good prospect" son is not typical. If we had the strong college sports system of the USA or even a fraction then there maybe such a draft could be possible. However a young player from say West Cork or Galway might feel just as isolated in Dublin or dare I say Limerick city as he would in Leicester or Blackburn.

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Kieran Burke link
15/1/2015 01:18:55 pm

Interesting article but the major flaws I see which such a proposal are (A) As you already stated english clubs will not want to risk losing out on players no matter what their age so will just sign them to their academy instead of putting them througg this draft system and (B) the biggest problem of this whole suggestion is that junior clubs in Ireland will never agree to this as there is a deep divide between junior football and league of Ireland over compensation fees and junior clubs wanting to be big fish in small ponds.

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Pat McGovern link
2/11/2019 11:15:13 pm

Just came across this interesting piece. I worry that the argument is past on a past that has long gone. I published some research on this in the British Journal of Sociology in 2000 (51, 3). As a youth coach in London I can tell you that 'pro-clubs' in London start taking players in from the age of six and contract them from the age of 9 when they start training three times per week. I doubt if any Irish kids are going to turn up at 15-16 who will have logged the same amount of hours and possess the same degree of technical proficiency. But that is the level they have to reach, which probably explains why so few make it through in the EPL these days.

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