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Celtic pioneers Irish-Scottish bid hoping to build on long soccer traditionPosted: Tuesday December 03, 2002 10:53 AMDUBLIN (Reuters) -- The history of soccer in Scotland and Ireland goes back almost to the birth of the modern game in the late 19th century. The Scottish Football Association was formed in 1873, the original Irish Football Association in 1880. That was the authority for soccer in the whole of the island of Ireland until the Republic of Ireland came into being in 1921. The influence of the early pioneers on the world game was huge, as along with the English, the Irish and Scots spread the game around the world. But in more than a century since then, the national teams of the two countries have had little real impact in world soccer terms. The best players from both countries have traditionally ended up playing in England, leaving only the Glasgow giants Celtic and Rangers having any impact at all on the European scene. Occasionally, Ireland and Scotland have produced first-class international sides -- but Scotland has never gone beyond the first round of the World Cup in eight attempts and Ireland has reached the finals only three times. Small-scale Ireland's domestic league is small-scale. Promising Irish players are generally signed up by English clubs at an early age and most fans pay more attention to the far richer English and Scottish leagues. A few of the leading clubs have gone fully professional in recent years but others are struggling financially. The League of Ireland -- divided into a 10-team premier division and a 12-team first division -- is in the process of switching to a summer season in an effort to boost attendances. Irish soccer took off on the international stage in 1988, when manager Jack Charlton -- a World Cup winner with England in 1966 -- guided the national side to the European championship, the first time the country had ever qualified for a major tournament. A creditable performance was followed by a last-eight finish in the World Cup finals in Italy two years later. Charlton quit after Ireland failed to reach the 1996 European championship in England -- beaten 2-0 in a playoff against the Netherlands -- and was replaced by his former international captain Mick McCarthy. He took them to this year's finals in South Korea and Japan where it was eliminated on penalties by Spain in the second round. McCarthy quit the post last month. Old firm Scottish football developed along very different lines. The first professional players anywhere in the world were Scots and since its formation Scottish soccer has been dominated by two different themes: the power of the Old Firm clubs Rangers and Celtic -- and the endless rivalry and obsession with beating England. The Scotland-England fixture, the oldest in the world and played annually from 1872 until 1989, was the highlight of the Scottish soccer calendar -- especially when Scotland won. Continual hooliganism and changing times brought an end to the occasion but now a new thought is upper-most in some minds in Scotland. It is that Rangers and Celtic have grown too big for the Scottish League and should join the English Premier League instead. It is a fanciful notion whose time has probably not yet come. But the 12-team Scottish Premier League is beset by other problems too -- not least an ongoing argument about television revenues. The Scottish team are also at a low ebb, far removed from the days of old when players such as Kenny Dalglish, Jim Baxter, Denis Law and Jimmy Johnstone were at their peak. However Scotland is still capable of producing world class managers. Today Sir Alex Ferguson of Manchester United bestrides the same stage once occupied by the likes of Sir Matt Busby, Bill Shankly and Jock Stein. Hosting the 2008 championship seems a long way off both in terms of what it could do for Scotland and Ireland as a whole -- and their somewhat small-scale soccer set-ups. Irish stadium doubts could dent joint bid with ScotlandDUBLIN (Reuters) -- Scotland and Ireland are promising to host the biggest-ever European finals if they win the right to host the tournament in six years' time. Eight stadiums -- six in Scotland and two in Ireland -- would provide 1.7 million seats for spectators watching the action at the 31 matches. "One of the most exciting aspects of our bid is that if we were successful, we would be able to provide the biggest ever spectator capacity for any European championship ever," said David Taylor, the chief executive of the Scottish Football Association, after a UEFA delegation visited Glasgow for an inspection of the city's stadiums. Scotland has enlisted famous sporting Scots to help its bid with former Liverpool striker Kenny Dalglish and Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson acting as ambassadors. "We are not talking about holding a good championship but the best," Sir Alex has said. Scotland is hoping its supporters' exemplary record at international tournaments -- it won the best fans awards at Euro'92 and at the World Cup in France four years ago -- will influence UEFA's decision-making process. And the Scots at least have some first-class modern stadiums immediately available. Glasgow's Hampden Park, the venue for this year's European Cup final, Celtic Park and Ibrox Stadium, are all ready and waiting; Murrayfield Stadium in Edinburgh, the home of Scottish rugby, will also be included in the bid. Two more stadiums are to be built with one in Dundee and Aberdeen likely, or else Hibernian FC's Easter Road stadium will be increased above the mandatory 30,000 capacity. UEFA says it is satisfied that Scotland's roads, airports and hotels will be able to cope with the influx of fans for the tournament. Scotland has never hosted a tournament of such magnitude and there is an anxiety in the country that the bid will falter because of Ireland's perceived struggle to build its quota of two stadiums, even though UEFA has insisted it is not a major problem with six years to prepare. Irish problem But despite bullish noises from the Irish government about the bid's prospects of success, serious doubts hang over all three of the venues initially mooted as possibilities. Dublin's Lansdowne Road stadium, the home of Irish rugby but also used by the national soccer side, requires extensive redevelopment to turn it into an all-seater venue capable of accommodating 33,000, from its current seated capacity of 22,000. The Irish Rugby Football Association has said from the outset it could not reduce Lansdowne Road to an all-seater arena -- thus losing around 20,000 terrace places -- unless it had access to Ireland's proposed new national stadium to be built at Abbotstown on the outskirts of Dublin. But Stadium Ireland, a pet project of Prime Minister Bertie Ahern, was put on ice earlier this year after the government admitted there were insufficient public funds to cover its 500-million-euro-plus cost. A trawl of the international private sector for backers to build the 80,000-seat venue yielded a number of interested parties whose proposals are currently being assessed but it is still by no means certain the project will be put out to tender. The other proposed venue is the recently-renovated 69,000-seat Croke Park. This too is problematic, as the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) -- historically a focal point for Irish nationalism -- does not allow "foreign" games to be played on its turf and would require an internal vote to relax the rule. Soccer is regarded as a "foreign game" and the GAA's ruling body does not meet again until next spring. Ahern has written to the GAA asking it to allow the championship matches as a one-off but the GAA has so far shown no sign it would be prepared to open its turnstiles to soccer. Sports Minister John O'Donoghue has said repeatedly that the success of the Ireland-Scotland bid is not predicated on which two stadiums Ireland might provide but with the UEFA decision looming, at least one certain venue would be a start. Factbox: VENUES:
COST: The Football Association of Ireland has not specified a budget for hosting its part of the championship but Ireland's Sports Minister has said the matches would bring in revenues of 50 million euros. The Scottish executive will immediately grant the Scottish Football Association 100 million euros if the bid is successful. The process of bidding for the tournament has cost 1.6 million euros. Scotland's economy is expected to benefit between 700-800 million euros if it wins the bid. FOOTBALL SET-UP: While football has been played on the island of Ireland since the 1860s, the modern-day League of Ireland was not formed until 1921, after southern Irish clubs broke away from the Belfast-based Irish League following Irish independence from Britain. The top clubs in the league are currently predominantly Dublin-based -- Shamrock Rovers, Bohemians, Shelbourne and St Patrick's Athletic. The Scottish FA Cup began in 1874, the Scottish League in 1890-91. The top division currently consists of 12 clubs. The league has been re-organized a number of times over the last 25 years and now boasts 42 teams in four divisions. FOOTBALL HONORS: Ireland: Under-16 European Champion 1998, Under-18 European Champion 1998. Scotland: Celtic: European Champion 1967. Rangers: European Cup Winners Cup winner 1972 CLUBS: There are only two professional clubs in the League of Ireland, Bohemians and Shelbourne, the remainder being semi-professional, with 10 clubs in the premier division and 12 in the first division. Scottish football is dominated by Rangers and Celtic, the Old Firm, who between them have won 87 of the 106 Scottish championships played. Aberdeen, Hearts and Hibernian have had occasional title victories. Aberdeen was the last club outside the big two to win the title -- in 1985. PREVIOUS HISTORY: Ireland has hosted world cross-country championship, and Lansdowne Road was used as a Rugby World Cup venue in 1991 and 1999. Scotland staged the Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh in 1986 and has also hosted Rugby World Cup matches. POLITICAL SITUATION: Relations between Ireland and Scotland are generally amicable, with many Irish people taking an interest in the fortunes of Glasgow-based football club Celtic. Thousands of Protestant Scottish settlers were brought over by the British government in the 17th century and "planted" in the northern province of Ulster where they were given lands taken from Irish owners as part of an English strategy to strengthen its hold over the province. Celtic has traditionally been a catholic club, Rangers protestant and this religious split is the one major outlet in Scotland for a milder form of sectarianism which in its more extreme forms has blighted life in Northern Ireland for so many years.
Copyright 2003 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. |
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