SHELBOURNE MIGHT NOT have qualified for Europe this season but their fans could be forgiven for dusting off their passports.
This is most definitely the honeymoon period following confirmation of the club’s takeover.
The announcement released via statement this morning that Hull City’s Acun Ilicali – dubbed Turkey’s version of Simon Cowell given his media and entertainment business portfolio – completed his purchase of the League of Ireland side was filled with the kind of positivity and ambition you would expect.
“Our vision for Shelbourne FC is to become the leader of the League of Ireland and demonstrate consistent success in European competitions. We believe that our investment and commitment will shape the future of the football in our academy, which will become the most modern academy structure in Ireland,” Ilicali said.
“We want to scout, recruit and train talented prospects from all over Ireland and Europe to be part of our family. With our global expertise and vision in football, media and entertainment verticals, we aim to bring new energy to Irish football and Shelbourne.”
This takeover has been in the mix since the start of the year, with links to Dundalk and St Patrick’s Athletic first emerging in February, although it was actually at a fans’ forum for Hull supporters in the Turkish tourist resort of Antalya that Ilicali first outlined his vision for a multi-club model that is now coming to fruition.
He paid for the all inclusive week-long trip for 320 of the club’s most loyal followers, chartering two planes, in November 2022. It was the latest in a string of moves to try and re-engage with a fan base that had been left bereft following the previous regime.
Free travel to away games and complimentary admission for children to home fixtures was also arranged.
“He must spend most of his own life travelling on a plane, I’d hate to see his carbon footprint,” one source jokes, detailing how his commitment to Hull saw him travel home to Turkey from England for his daughter’s birthday on a Friday but was back in the country hours later for a first-team game.
Being hands on is the way he operates. If his time at Hull is any kind of guide, Shels fans can expect him to be a regular at games at Tolka Park – the odd away too – and he is not someone who distances himself from the hardcore.
Indeed, sources with knowledge of this takeover of Shels describe him as “a breath of fresh air” for the club, someone who is “reasonable, open, humble and wonderful.”
See, the honeymoon is most definitely in full swing.
Those who have worked with Ilicali since his arrival at Hull are equally effusive about his personable approach, although that doesn’t mean he is infallible. Far from it. As one source explains, the Hull owner’s “wings were clipped” when he initially tried to have too much sway on player transfers and how the team was run.
Signings like Turkey international Ozan Toufan and Fulham’s Jean Michaël Seri were brought in on big wages during a flurry of business during his first transfer window last summer.
Manager Grant McCann was sacked less than a week after Ilicali arrived, Georgian legend Shota Arveladze was swiftly appointed with the stated aim of eventual promotion to the Premier League.
Eight months later he was also shown the door having finished 19th, and Liam Rosenior followed as successor.
There is a ruthless edge to this man of the people.
“Make no mistake, there is pressure on Hull this season,” a source adds. “They want Premier League football.”
The appointment of Tan Kesler as vice-chairman helped smooth out some of those early rough edges, and The 42 understands that over the course of the last two months, as talks intensified and light at the end of the takeover tunnel came into vision, the search for a director of football at Shels is now at an advanced stage.
Someone with knowledge of the Irish game is expected to be appointed to work in tandem with manager Damien Duff, and it is anticipated that more details will be confirmed in the coming weeks regarding future arrangements – chief among them where the €1.2 million deal the previous board signed off to buy Tolka Park from Dublin City Council now stands.
That is what will be of most interest to Shels fans, especially as Hull are also in process of trying to bring their own first team and academy bases together in one complex close to the Hull-council owned MKM Stadium, where the Championship side call home. Currently, the academy train at a nearby college.
So, what happens next for Shels?
Club sources indicate that the level of investment will now allow them to compete at the top level of the Irish transfer market, while also putting them in a stronger position to keep their best talent.
And, as a source explained, they will also now have the path to join a club across the water.
Conversely, it is expected that Shels will now be used as a hub for those young Hull players on cusp of the next stage in their professional careers, and the manner of how that arrangement plays out will naturally test the nature of just how joined up both sides’ thinking really is.
Duff has spoken about how those clubs currently leading the way here – Shamrock Rovers and Derry City – can offer more significant financial packages. “Usually at 27/28/29, a player with a lot of experience in the league that has a bit of quality costs €1,200 a week. I ain’t got that. I might be able to get one or two or three of them but a lot of the teams above can keep forking out and I can’t,” he said on the eve of this season.
That has now changed.
Duff lamented how his budget would have quadrupled after the proposed investment from Southampton owners Sport Republic fell through at the end of 2022.
It has arrived from a new source, and with it comes different strings attached.
