The Curious Case Of Dundalk …
There is a weird situation in the League of Ireland regarding these matters; the Irish FA has a nod-and-a-wink attitude towards UEFA Pro License requirements and doesn’t push too hard on the door when it comes to their domestic game.
The club which best exemplifies this is Dundalk, and that got them into a spot of bother last year.
Now this story made headlines around Europe at the time, so it’s curious that no-one in the media has brought it up in relation to where we are right now.
Dundalk were, until August 2020, run by a guy called Vinny Perth.
He doesn’t have UEFA Pro License so the club ran “by committee” with him as one of the many voices on it.
They gave him a modest coaching role, but everyone knew he ran the team.
In an interview for OTB Sports, the Irish Independent journalist Dan McDonnell takes an odd story about Perth’s team travelling to Cork for a game …
“This is a strange old story, but in ‘League of Ireland Land’ we are used to it to some degree,” he said. “Vinny Perth was previously Dundalk manager but couldn’t be called manager and was head coach. It was a nod and a wink thing where everyone knew that Perth was ‘the boss’ but he couldn’t be called the manager.
“You go to the games, you look at the side-line and you know who is in charge. Players would talk about who is picking the team. There have been several situations like that in recent years.
“I remember a time when Dundalk went down to Cork to play them when they were really fierce rivals, and in the match programme John Caulfield went out of his way to welcome ‘John Gill and his team’. Everyone knew that there was a bit of niggle in that, but factually correct in the sense that Gill would have been listed in various forms.”
When Perth left the club, the guy who took over was another coach who didn’t have a Pro Licence.
For once the media has gotten a hold of this story; the Record interviewed the man himself last night, and he had a warning for Celtic and the fans.
His name is Filippo Giovagnoli; he took over the club in 2020 and immediately ran into trouble over this matter.
He got away with it in the league only because the Irish FA is a little loose on this because of the financial requirements of having to hire bosses with Pro Licenses … even then, clubs have to keep tit low key as it’s strictly forbidden.
The SFA will get no such leeway from UEFA, and they won’t pretend not to know what’s going on.
UEFA certainly don’t.
It’s in Europe, of course, where this matter will be most critical, as Giovagnoli points out.
“Ange can’t be on the bench for the Champions League unless he gets special dispensation – but how can they do that when I was banned? Trust me, it would be a disaster if he doesn’t have his Pro Licence. After the precedent they set with me they can’t let it happen. Dundalk were fined because of me so people would ask why they didn’t fine Celtic.”
The Scottish press will certainly ask, and although the club only got a fine for the initial offence – UEFA caught him shouting instructions at players – they were warned that the club would be banned from Europe if there was a repeat of it.
At that point, the League Of Ireland stopped letting him sit in the dugout, and he was jettisoned shortly thereafter.
This is a major precedent, and we would be mad to ignore it.