League of Ireland Football - Why don't you attend?

but I do think its a pity that, for example, Cork is packed with fanatical Man U supporters who wouldnt cross the road to watch Cork City.

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I suppose to look at it in a wider context people see it as entertainment and they pay for the level of entertainment they want. Going to old trafford etc is a weekend away a bit of an experience so people might think that is worth it. To suggest we should plug into the irish soccer scene for some form of loyalty could extend to going to the cinema to watch Irish movies only, only having the irish tv stations at home which would boost ratings and prob feed back into more homegrown talent. The thing is we have our hard earned cash and we want value for money, until the LoI can properly market a product that offers the more laid back supporter value it wont really kick on at all. And going by recent revelations on the financial side the LoI seems to be going backwards if anything.

This may seem contraversial, but another way of improving domestic soccer would be to have Ireland join with some other small western European countries to have a combined top division.

UEFA are the biggest barrier to this - have a thing about domestic leagues having to be based in 1 country only. This perpetuates the strenght of English, Spanish & Italian football and is biased against small and medium sized countries. If you got all the small countries in Europe and aggregated them into bigger leagues, then these bigger leagues could be a good as the Premiership. Champions League could be the top teams in each of these bigger leagues. The classic example is why isnt there a Scandanavian League instead of leagues in the individual nordic countries?

An appropriate league for us might be with Northern Ireland, Scotland, Belgium, Luxembourg and Netherlands with each getting a pro-rata number of teams in a 20 team league. Would mean Ireland would have 2-3 genuinely world class teams.

I dont think FIFA would have any objections, they've already done this in Australia/New Zealand.

With modern cheap air travel, it should be possible. A sample "Atlantic League" could be (for demonstration purposes - I may be wrong on who the best teams are in each country).

Netherlands: Ajax, PSV, Rotterdam, Utrecht, Vitesse Arnham, Feyanoord.
Belgium: Anderlecht, Brugges, S. Liege, Mechelen,
Luxembourg: 1 team based in Luxembourg city.
Scotland: Celtic, Rangers, Hearts, Aberdeen, Dundee Utd.
N. Ireland: Linfield.
Ireland: 2 x Dublin teams plus Cork City.

csirl said:

UEFA are the biggest barrier to this - have a thing about domestic leagues having to be based in 1 country only. This perpetuates the strenght of English, Spanish & Italian football and is biased against small and medium sized countries.

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Cardiff, Swansea and Wrexham are Welsh teams and they play English teams ever week

Er - or closer to home: Derry City in the eircom League?

Or Monaco in the French League.