From the worst in Ireland to Euro party crashers
ONLY a few months ago Dundalk were uncertain they would see out this season at their own ramshackle stadium. Victory in a Champions League qualifier that begins tonight and the League of Ireland club will be able to build a new one.
In modern-day football, stories of unexpected over-achievement do not come any better than this.
Dundalk — average home gate less than 2,500 — began their domestic season hoping to defend the title they won last year.
With a row over the lease of their Oriel Park home ongoing with a former owner, their future was uncertain. The football, they hoped, would help take everybody’s mind off a problem that was not going away.
It still hasn’t gone away either — but the football has done more than anybody ever hoped in terms of providing a distraction.
Tonight at Dublin’s cavernous Aviva Stadium — capacity 51,700, hired especially — Dundalk face Polish side Legia Warsaw just one home and away victory away from a place in the group stages of the Champions League alongside Bayern Munich and Barcelona.
No Irish team has ever been there before. No side with a UEFA coefficient as low as Dundalk’s has ever been there before. But after a 3-1 win over Belarusian champions BATE Borisov in the last round, manager Stephen Kenny and his players are faced with a tie that could change the outlook of this club forever.
‘A win would be sensational and would give hope to every small club in Ireland and Europe,’ said the former Dunfermline boss yesterday.
‘We’ve shown we can punch above our weight at this level and we want to show that again over the two legs and create a massive result for football in Ireland.
‘This could transform the landscape of football in Ireland by getting a result that would really give confidence to every player in this country.’
Kenny’s team pick up a few hundred pounds a week during a 42-week season. They work during the day and train at night. During the off-season, they do not get paid at all and some have to claim benefits to get by.
That is one of the reasons why the story of what will unfold in Dublin tonight and conclude in Poland next week is largely and unavoidably about money as well as pure sporting glory. Dundalk have already earned £4.6million in UEFA prize money for reaching this stage. That is 49 times more than they earned for winning their domestic league last season.
But should they upset the odds and squeeze past Legia into the Champions League proper, that figure would rocket to £16.7m and that is where the construction of a new stadium comes in.
Dundalk could not play at Oriel Park tonight even if they wanted to. It does not meet UEFA guidelines and, frankly, is a mess. The playing surface is artificial, facilities for supporters are among the worst in the country — and that is saying something — while the away dressing room does not even bear inspection. No Irish football fan will be surprised Dundalk’s stadium has fallen into this state.
It was only four years ago that the club — playing in front of 250 diehards — finished bottom of the league and were only saved from relegation by another club going out of business.
Dundalk survived but they were close to the end, too, back then.
Buckets were shaken to raise money, the floodlights would be turned off before the players had left the field at night in order to save vital pennies and, like many at their level, the club staggered blindly forwards.
Two local businessmen, Paul Brown and Andy Connolly, saved Dundalk, taking over the club and guaranteeing its debts. The two men run a local nuts and bolts company. You can make your own analogy. Now established as the League of Ireland’s eminent team, that status pales when compared to what stands before them tonight.
Their first qualifying tie — against Hafnarfjordur of Iceland back in July — was considered so irrelevant that the club could not find a TV company willing to show it.
Club officials considered streaming it on their own website, only to discover that the only person in possession of the club’s Wi-Fi password was by then working in a local pet shop. It is worth pausing to stress at this point that none of this is made up.
And so to today. Dundalk worked out they needed to attract 12,000 spectators to the game to cover the costs of hiring the Aviva, installing goalline technology — another UEFA requirement — and adjusting a TV gantry. As of last night, 25,000 tickets — reasonably priced between 10 and 30 euros — had been sold and 10,000 more are expected to pay on the door.
The fact that the population of Dundalk — situated halfway between Dublin and Belfast — totals just 40,000 tells you that either the whole town will be in the stadium tonight or that something else is afoot.
Tales of the club’s players celebrating goals against BATE in the last round and spotting shirts of other Irish teams in the crowd provides the answer.
Despite talk of resentment over the windfall heading Dundalk’s way and what it may in turn do to the competitiveness of the league, it seems that rivalry has been set aside as some clubs prepare to bus their own supporters to Dublin for free tonight.
‘It’s not just the League of Ireland, it’s all of Irish football that connected with the performance against BATE,’ added Kenny.
‘We have players from Waterford, Galway, Mayo, Meath, Dublin, Derry — right throughout the country. The four provinces are all represented and people at grassroots level have connected with the performance in the last round, not just the victory itself.
‘There is a lot of goodwill and this has ramifications not just for the league, but for people who love the game and are involved at all levels throughout the country.’
Talking at UEFA’s official pre-match press conference yesterday, the sheer improbability of this story was something Kenny and his captain Stephen O’Donnell were understandably trying to keep at bay. It’s not about the romance when you are trying to win.
Legia are ninth in the Polish league, have won one domestic game out of five and managed to beat Slovakia’s eighth-best team Dukla Trencin by a 1-0 aggregate in the last round of Champions League qualifying.
O’Donnell, once a trainee at Arsenal and a former Falkirk midfielder, believes Dundalk have no reason to fear the Poles any more than they did BATE prior to their two-legged triumph earlier this month.
‘We’ve been successful for the last few games and there’s no point changing it,’ he said. ‘We won’t be overawed by the occasion, we’ll go out and deliver our own performance and hopefully that’s good enough.’
Over the weekend at Dublin’s sparkling stadium, volunteers have been carefully covering up the giant Aviva written across seats high up in the main stand. The names of non-UEFA sponsors are not to be visible on nights like this and it is these vignettes that bring structure to this amazing story.
It is hard to escape the financial element of this tie, of course. Aside from aiding the club’s finances, Kenny’s players also stand to earn tens of thousands of euros in bonuses from another victory.
But for a club from the backwaters of European football, this is about something else equally fundamental, too.
Defender Brian Gartland said: ‘I’ve shed tears a few times over the past few days, a lot of tears. But I just keep laughing when I think about it too.
‘We have a good chance of playing in the Champions League group stages. Imagine us going to Real Madrid, PSG, those places.
‘But then why not? We believe we’re good enough to go through. Why not keep this going?’