Scottish and Irish football could merge into 'Celtic League'

Today marks the first time the Republic of Ireland have faced England since the controversial riots in Dublin back in 1995. But the thirst for football in Ireland has never evaporated.

Similarly, Scotland are looking forward to a fixture at Wembley in August as the English FA clearly seem to be satisfying the demand for the English national team to battle its closest neighbours.

For English fans this kind of fixture adds a welcome pinch of spice to friendly games which are usually incredibly mundane and played against an experimental eleven of one of the world’s other elite nations. Irish and Scottish fans are likely to have a far greater interest in these matches.

The popularity of club football in England undoubtedly surpasses that of the national side at the present time. English football fans’ relationship with the club they support is far more intimate than the connection they have to their country, and crucially their club participate in many more enjoyable and meaningful games during the Premier League season and the Champions League.

Obviously a major tournament such as a World Cup will rekindle an Englishman’s affection for his national team but generally club comes first in the modern day. Unfortunately for Scottish and Irish fans, their league football is far inferior to that of England’s and thus they often have to rely on international games for big football occasions.

Celtic and Rangers are obviously the biggest clubs over the two nations and currently ply their trade in the Scottish football leagues. Rangers’ financial crisis has left them stuck in the lower depths of the Scottish leagues and thus Celtic have been left to steamroller domestic football. The 3-0 victory over Hibernian in the Scottish Cup Final epitomises how comfortably they were able to complete the domestic double this year.

By criticising the standard of Scottish I must point out that I am not criticising Celtic. I feel sorry for them. Celtic are a big club who are trying their best to outgrow the league they are in. They performed well in Europe this year but it is extremely unlikely they can push on from this with the inferior funding they get in comparison to England and other major football nations such as Spain, Italy and Germany.

The prospect of Celtic and Rangers joining the English Premiership has been mooted for some time now but the idea has never received enough momentum to be followed through. This is probably because, although the deal would benefit the Glasgow clubs, it would destroy Scottish domestic football whilst not transforming English football enough to justify such devastation.

The SPL is currently going through a transitional phase as a reform package was finally agreed this month to deliver a merged league body involving play-off games and better financial redistribution with regards to lower tier clubs. Hopefully this aids the improvement of Scottish football but perhaps the SFA could’ve looked at a more drastic plan to reinvent the league.

Whilst the SPL is comparatively weak to the rest of Europe, the leagues of Ireland and Northern Ireland are even poorer. Shamrock Rovers are the most successful team in domestic Irish football and have a stadium capacity of just 6,000. Compare that with Celtic Park’s 60,832 and of course the home of England’s most successful team, Manchester United’s Old Trafford which holds 75,765.

Irish football could certainly advantage from an affiliation with Scottish football, but perhaps the Scots could also benefit. The Scottish and Irish football associations clearly enjoy a decent relationship seen in their joint bid to host Euro 2008 and Euro 2020 (which involved Wales). Could something not have been arranged to plan a merge of the leagues?

The idea of a joint league has been put to FIFA before as the leagues of Belgium and Netherlands merging to create one division has been suggested. Interestingly this is already the case in women’s football which has the ‘BeNe League’ comprising of teams from both nations.

Belgium already has some relatively big clubs such as Anderlecht, Genk and Club Brugge. With FIFA ratification, merging these with teams in the Eredivise such as Ajax, PSV and Feyenoord could create a more competitive ‘Atlantic league’.

The Irish and Northern Irish leagues have no clubs of this stature and thus the merge could be even simpler. Club football in Ireland and Northern Ireland could be completely torn apart and rebuilt to have brand new teams representing cities such as Dublin, Ulster and Cork. These teams would undoubtedly have more appeal to the population of the area, tourists and football fans in general.

One has only to look over at football’s egg-shaped neighbours rugby, who created a ‘Celtic League’ for Irish, Scottish and Welsh teams in 2001. The competition, now known as ‘Pro 12’, has been extremely successful and more competitive, and has also now attracted Italian teams to compete in it.

I don’t want to blur the borders between domestic too much. Losing national leagues completely would be a travesty and a ‘European Super League’, which has been suggested before, would completely destroy the beauty of domestic football. Thus strict regulations and boundaries would have to be written by FIFA if a merged league was to be. But the idea of an Irish/Scottish league is an attractive one.

Television companies would be more interested, players would be more interested, and fans would be more interested. The money would increase dramatically and perhaps allow Scottish and Irish football fans to support a club which actually has the capacity to compete on Europe’s biggest stage.

Incorporating Welsh football clubs would be extremely unlikely as tempting the likes of Cardiff and Swansea from the glamour of English football would be impossible and thus there is little Wales could offer the league. Wales now occupies a tenth of the Premiership and so, although their domestic league is weak, they have club teams more than capable of satisfying supporter demand. Perhaps Welsh clubs could apply on a case-by-case basis to see if they could benefit the league.

Creating a ‘Celtic League’ in football would be a major job full of countless complications and hurdles to jump, but I have no doubt it would be a profitable venture. Scottish and Irish football both owe it to their own supporters to form a league which their population can finally be proud of.

Money talks in football, and who knows, someone with vision and big pockets could swoop in and make this happen. If Qatar can host the World Cup, anything can happen.

Follow me on Twitter @RichMaher93