FRIDAY AFTERNOON AT the Aviva Stadium brought another reminder that the rich have wildly different metrics for convenience.
Acun Ilicali made his fortune in media and television – amassing a fortune of an estimated $100 million and a nickname as Turkey’s answer to Simon Cowell – and he was speaking yesterday as Shelbourne’s new owner, the club he has bought to go along with his purchase last year of Hull City.
“Everything looks so good”, he beamed, “You play Friday nights, whereas the game is Saturday in England. Friday night, Shelbourne game; Saturday, Hull City game. My schedule is usually I go to most of the games for Hull City from either Dominican Republic or Turkey. It suits: Dominican Republic, Ireland, England, Turkey, Dominican Republic. It even fits the map.”
A handy stop-off from the Dominican Republic is one selling point the League of Ireland’s marketing department have overlooked to now. But hey, Ilicali’s story has something to surprise everyone in the room. Nobody should have been more shocked than the assembled press, who were interviewing a multi-millionaire who started out as a football reporter.
Ilicali left his quote-gathering days behind in the 1990s as he got on with the business of becoming rich. He now owns channels TV8 and TV8.5, digital platform Exxen and international production company Acun Medya, which operates across 14 countries and has adapted the likes of Survivor and The Voice for television in Turkey and elsewhere.
The story he tells of his own rise is remarkable. “I lost parents in a [road] traffic accident 20. At 21, I was divorced. At 22, I had a big [road] traffic accident. At 24, I was bankrupt. So at 24 and 25 I had nothing in life. Zero money, zero hope.” And here we are.
Ilicali also laid out his football bona fides, saying he used to sleep outside Fenerbahce’s stadium the night before games to ensure he got the best seat. His money now buys seats of power, and his investment in Shels follows his takeover of English Championship side Hull City last year. He has proved broadly popular with Hull supporters, and spoke yesterday of how average attendances have more than doubled in his time there. Hull finished 15th in last season’s Championship, an improvement of four places on the previous season. He expects to challenge for the play-offs next year.
Having taken over at Hull, he quickly made it clear he wanted to support the club by investing in another club elsewhere, telling a Hull fans forum last year that, “my idea is actually to buy another team that can help us to improve our young talents.” That search led him to look at clubs in Portugal and Belgium, before alighting on Ireland. It initially looked as if he would pick Dundalk but has settled on a corner of Dublin.
“We discovered hidden treasure in Dublin and it is called Shelbourne”, said Ilicali yesterday, a rare instance of the football reporter writing the headline. His immediate priority, he said, is to invest in Shels’ training facilities at the AUL Complex, with pressure on space so intense right now that the club’s youth academy recently made the decision to disband two of their lower-ranked underage sides in the Dublin and District Schoolboys League.
The main focus of Ilicali’s press conference was on the men’s first team, with Damien Duff sitting at the back of the room. (Women’s manager Noel King was present too, but Shelbourne’s women’s team didn’t get a single mention until the end of the Sunday newspaper section at the end of the press conference, more than 50 minutes into what was an hour-long gig.)
Ilicali repeatedly praised Duff and then heaped some pressure on him, albeit the kind of pressure that comes with an ambition Duff himself has been striving for.
“Of course we will have some recruitment this summer but the timing is short for us”, said Ilicali. “We need some time. If you ask me what the target is, I feel next season we’ll be in good places. If we are not in Europe for the next season, I will be disappointed. It would not be a miracle for us to become champions, if you ask me. This is a tough league but the coach and players believe in improvement. We already have a system.”
Chairman Andrew Doyle was sitting beside Ilicali at the press conference and he clarified that Shels remain committed to buying Tolka Park back from Dublin City Council, with negotiations ongoing and expected to be concluded before the end of this year.
Ilicali says he believes Shels can draw crowds of up to 15,000 people, and perhaps of more than 20,000. That would necessitate a huge upgrade of Tolka Park, but Tan Kesler – the Vice-Chairman of Hull City and introduced by Ilicali as “Mr. Operations” at Shels – is promising an overhaul.
“Tolka Park is special for our club and there will be some improvements in the future”, he said. “We are still working on it.” Doyle added the ground won’t just be rebuilt but “reimagined” as an important community hub, rather than merely a football ground.
The interaction between Shelbourne and Hull was the topic of most questioning. Ilicali insisted that Shels would not be merely a feeder club for Hull City, saying it is an “individual project” and their primary goal is to restore success to the Dublin club. He did say that both clubs will mutually profit from their relationship, however.
“There can be some players [moving] from Shelbourne to Hull City and from Hull City to Shelbourne, yes”, he said, “but I want all of you to understand this is an individual project for us. The aim is to bring Shelbourne to higher levels, after that co-operation is okay.”
The extent of that co-operation will be one of the main storylines of the months and years to come. Ilicali’s proposed deal for Dundalk is understood to have collapsed in the wake of comments made by Hull manager Liam Rosenior, in which he spoke of the benefits of the proposed deal, saying that “there’s no point us playing in a certain way and Dundalk not playing in that way.” That comment caused outrage among Dundalk fans, fearing their side would be reduced to vassal status.
Ilicali yesterday dismissed the prospect of Duff’s Shelbourne being asked to play the same way as Hull, saying “we cannot expect the two teams to play completely the same style because every chef has his own talent in cooking.”
Transfer-wise, we will likely see movement between Shelbourne and Hull, but Fifa rules cap the number of loaned players from one club to another at three. Ilicali spoke yesterday of Ireland’s position in the European Union, which undoubtedly made Shels a more attractive proposition. Hull can’t sign any EU player aged under 18, so if Hull do identify value in these player markets, they can now theoretically park them at Shels and move them to Hull when they turn 18.
“I was with the Croatian Federation chairman and we had a meeting in Turkey”, said Ilicali. “There are so many Croatian talents that can improve coming to Ireland. For example, most of the countries it is not very easy. When you are a club in England you cannot do it. But, in Ireland, now we have the Croatian potential to bring and discover some talents. This European Union advantage is very good.”
Where Shels won’t be of benefit is in the recruitment of young talent from outside the EU. Brexit’s points-based rules has made it extremely difficult for Hull or any other English club to recruit cheap, unsung players from around the world, and signing them for Shels and playing them in Ireland would not make any difference to that process.
The wider issue of multi-club ownership is becoming fraught, with Uefa’s recent benchmarking report stating it poses “a material threat to the integrity of European club competitions” in the event clubs of the same owner meet in the same competition. Uefa’s rules currently forbid clubs who share an owner with a ‘direct influence’ from playing in the same competition, so the only scenario in which Hull and Shelbourne would fall foul of the rules is if both were to qualify for the same Uefa competition, a very remote prospect.
There is a broader criticism of multi-club ownership, however, in relation to a club’s identity. Yves Leterme, former Belgian Prime Minister and the ex-chief investigator of Uefa’s financial regulator, told The 42 earlier this year of the double-edge of the multi-club model. “It can add a lot to the competitiveness of a club but whether the club remains rooted in the local community, that is more of a challenge.”
COO of fan-owned Bohemians Daniel Lambert, meanwhile, recently tweeted that multi-club ownership can have a “potentially hugely negative” effect on the League of Ireland.
When that comment was put to Ilicali, chairman Andrew Doyle jumped in.
“I actually spoke to Daniel during the week and I told him every single aspect of his concern can be covered in contract. I am a former lawyer and I offered to draft the contracts for him.” Ilicali then laughed off any concerns about multi-club rules.
A fascinating chapter in the history of one of Ireland’s great clubs awaits.