The Business of International Football: Inside the Welsh Football Revolution | Noel Mooney (Ep.109)

23:48Noel Mooney:And now, as I say, we've gone from almost zero in terms of government funding to more than£10 million a year in government funding. and that has really changed our profile. So I would say we've been really strong in building public affairs and building government income. And we saw during COVID, it was a stark wake up for a lot of us, is that sponsorships are important, but to really move a dial, if you can get your government on board with you, you know, one stroke of a pen by them can make a huge difference. So I'll give you a very simple example. You know, the health budget is enormous in any of our countries.

24:23Noel Mooney:Whereas if the government adopts the concept that sport can play a major role in preventative health and that's something that we're working with a lot on the parties we've got which elections coming up we've met all of the political parties to discuss if they can use sports as preventative rather than spending on beds and drugs and medicines down here if they can spend a lot more at the early stage of getting kids to play sport getting people to play sport for life that's a much better use of the money than spending it later so we've done quite a good job of convincing people that's the case We just really want to see cross-cutting into the health budget, into education budget.

25:00Noel Mooney:We think that that can deliver a lot more funding for us than, for example, your tyre manufacturer or your standard sponsorship. So we focus more on that. That said, we are very much open for business. If you want to be our partners and get behind the Welsh football, we're certainly open to that. We live in an environment now where superstar athletes drive a lot of commercial value. And I would imagine as a national team, if you have a superstar athlete, you become more appealing to brands because you get their rights as part of that. When you came in in 2021, you still had a Gareth Bale. Did you have to be careful?

25:36And was there a part of the plan where you didn't tie too much of that commercial reliance, that commercial success to Gareth's participation in the team? so that when he eventually retired, there was consistency, there were long-term deals in there that were still providing the value that you needed on the commercial side for Welsh football.

25:54Noel Mooney:So I came in at the very tail end of Gareth's career at Wales. And, you know, I was only there a year with him, really. And he was a talisman in getting us to work up. I mean, we played Austria in the semifinal. We beat them 2-1. He scored the two goals and was the standout player. You know, he was just absolute. And coming at the end of his career, he was outstanding. I mean, just, you know, world-class players we know. So I saw the tail end of it. And what I would say is, and we kind of joke a bit with the senior players now, but we didn't capitalize enough on him when he was here. So I had worked very closely with the Portuguese FA back in 2011, 2012, to set their new strategy.

26:31Noel Mooney:They had a new regime come in, the Portuguese FA. They weren't a particularly good federation, the Portuguese FA. And they brought in, well, a president was elected called Fernando Gómez. He brought in a CEO called Tiago Corveiro. And I worked very closely with them on their new planning and new strategy. And they pretty much wrapped that around during Cristiano, after Cristiano. So DC, AC, I think they call it. So how would they plan for after Cristiano? Because he's such a commercial powerhouse. I think we could have done a lot more with Gareth. And he was really open to that. I mean, he's such a fantastic person.

27:06Noel Mooney:He loves Wales and his Welsh football so much. We could have done a lot more with him. So is it regret? Not really, because I only saw him towards the end of his career. As I say, even now, he's just so open and accessible to us to help for West football. But I would say that we probably could have done more with him. You know, there wasn't huge legacy deals done on the back of Gareth. I mean, for example, we were Adidas. Adidas are our sponsors. I could not say that we got this massive surge of income because Gareth was an Adidas athlete, for example. So I would say there's only regret there that we didn't use him as much as we could have when he was there.

27:40Noel Mooney:But at the same time, it meant that we didn't have, we didn't fall off a cliff when he went. That was, I suppose, the upside of that. Yeah, because Wales have had some absolutely incredible individuals, haven't they? If you go to Ian Rush, Ryan Giggs, Gareth Bale, there's quite often a standout player that comes into it. What I really like about this, and this is no disrespect to the team now, but it really seems like a team. You don't look at the individuals on that team and pick one player who is far and above, who the team is relying on to perform every single game. it does seem like the group has fantastic collective value.

28:12Noel Mooney:So you're absolutely right. I mean, the group is such a tight group. I met some of the players this week at that event in London and they're just such a warm group to each other. They just have such a sense of camaraderie that they're hard to beat because they really love each other very much and they get on so well together. But you're right. I mean, we played North Macedonia. I think they'd been meeting for two years or so. And I mean, the way that Craig and his team want us to play football, when we first met Craig, that is how he described the profile of players, which is kind of a lot of pace, a lot of connections between combination play, a lot of movement and that.

28:48Noel Mooney:That was exactly how he described how he wants us to play. So they're a fantastic group. And I'll widen this a bit because in 2025, we got to our first major tournament for the women's team as well. They had a superstar player in Jess Fishlock, who's just come to the end as well. And, you know, she was very much the talus person, like Gareth was for the men's national team. And I can see now we're starting a new, fresh campaign with Jess as a coach now. She's coming to our coaching team without her. And you can see that team evolving into, and we have to be like that. You know, it's great that we do have the likes of Ian Rush or Ryan Giggs or Jess Fishlot coming along.

29:21Noel Mooney:But really what you want is a team that is extremely together, that knows each other, trusts each other. And when the time comes, they deliver together. And, you know, we're really positive going into the future that we have that and that we'll capitalize a lot upon that. You mentioned the public funding, you mentioned commercial being a big part, but you mentioned then the stadium. Why is there not a national football stadium, considering how important football is? Is there a plan, is there a dream to have the national Welsh football stadium like the Principality Stadium? Or is there a deep satisfaction with the links that you have with your Swanseys, with your Cardiffs, with your Wrexhams to support national football through the club?

30:00Noel Mooney:So in any business you run, you look at the deck of cards that you have and you look at what your competitive advantage is. And in Wales, we've got huge advantages in what we're trying to do, which is to be successful and so on, because we have access to the biggest league in the world, which means that you've got Cardiff City, where we play, and our fans absolutely love being in Cardiff City Stadium. It's become a fortress for us. And then Swansea is a club that we're really close to, of course, and they've got a lovely stadium, obviously, that's been in the Premier League. And then Wrexham is the one that's the oldest international stadium in the world.

30:32Noel Mooney:they're now redeveloping that stadium which we're supporting them on very much so like there's countries if you take for example germany they move their games around they don't have a national stadium that they play in there's a number of countries that don't have a national stadium if you will they play around the country for us we're very lucky in that the principality stadium was developed with 74 000 seats so when we kick off euro 28 in that stadium we are hosting the opening match of Euro 28 because we have a stadium that was developed by lottery funding, by, you know, we contribute ourselves to it, of course, the rugby union owners.

31:05Noel Mooney:We're lucky to have that gorgeous stadium that's hosted many FA Cup finals and so on in the centre of the city. It's fantastic. Then you've got Cardiff City, which suits us perfectly for our qualifiers and so on. But I suppose if you look to the future, we have no desire to build another football stadium when we have access to the stadia. I suppose what you'd love to see is if Cardiff City get promoted back to the Premier League. You know, we've spoken to the club that there is opportunity to develop two ends to turn that from 33 ,000 seats into, you know, closer to 45 ,000 seats. That for us would be about right because, you know, we have a brilliant red wall that's got a great brand all across the world.

31:48Noel Mooney:You know, they've lit up tournaments. you know we've got this bucket hat concept which people just absolutely love in Wales it's a fantastic thing we're so lucky with our red wall that we want to deliver for them what they want you know there's no rocket science to it our fans are pretty clear they want to stay in Cardiff City Stadium but then we've got a brilliant fan base up the north and as Wrexham do develop their stadium we'd love to be able to say when I was a kid and I'd come and watch Ireland as an Ireland fan growing up we'd go to Wrexham to watch them against Wales and I was really struck by you know what a great stadium that was at the time the games moved on Wrexham have certainly moved on so we're really happy to to work with our partners in these clubs and with the Principality Stadium to use them for our tournaments and I don't see any change to that model over the next decade or so.

32:35I want to tee you up to talk through this properly when looking at the associations that you then have with those clubs the importance of them to you the depth the talent that you then have to pick from the broader football landscape of wales you sit next to england which has 60 million people and as we joked about before we came on it's seemingly about 15 teams at the moment that they could put out for players of 11 we also mentioned there how important it is to have a really close group of players to come together and really know each other going into these tournaments tell me a little bit about that participation base in football and how deep it is where it needs to get to to to really fulfill uh what you're looking to do yes

33:16Noel Mooney:we've got that unique structure which our top cities play in the english system and that is a real blessing for us in many ways because it means that for example the academies have access to the top academies in the world so if you look at our national men's team over the last number of years a lot of the players have come from swansea city who had a category a category one um in the system which meant they played against the arsenals and tottenham's and aston villas from that age of ten right through games program fantastic coaching fantastic and that created conveyor belt for us of players into the men's national team what we're looking to do is to collaborate with wrexham with cardiff and swansea to get them towards you know the category one status which means that say wrexham for example they're they're category three at the moment we've had a lot of conversations with them and they've taken some of our senior staff from the faw into wrexham to develop just that is to improve their academies what for us is the perfect situation if you had a category one academy in the north so Wrexham hoovering up the top talent across north wales so in the future aniko williams or harry wilson for example and in the girls game marid griffiths who went to mentionite for example they'd be hoovered up by a Wrexham get the very best you know care and coaching from that very young age right through and go on to play for us in more cups and euros and so on.

34:36Noel Mooney:In the south, obviously, you've got Swansea and Cardiff. Now, it's an interesting situation because we're one of the unique countries in the world where our top team is playing a different system. Again, a blessing. It is a blessing. It's a blessing. There's no question about that. It's a blessing for us. And then we've also got the responsibility on top of that to develop our domestic league as well. So that means that if you've got a player who's not a child superstar or develops late, that we've given the opportunity for them to come through our clubs. So players will jump off our system at some point into the English system, if you will.

35:06Noel Mooney:So if you take North Wales, for example, Carnarvon would have an excellent youth system in our own league. But then the player will, if the player is absolutely fantastic and is going on that international journey, they'll get picked off at some stage by a Manchester United or a Liverpool or an Everton up in that part of the world. You know, for us, it'd be great if they went from a Carnarvon at a certain age to a Wrexham. And then they play for Wrexham, you know, with what's going on there. and you know they're signing Welsh internationals at the moment like Kiefer Moore and Nathan Broadhead have signed for Wrexham in recent times and doing fantastic there but wouldn't it be lovely if we had players growing up in North Wales as I say like a Harry Wilson or Nico Williams coming through the Wrexham system playing for Wrexham in the Premier League in the future because otherwise they go to Liverpool because both of those were actually Liverpool weren't they?

35:53Noel Mooney:Exactly, exactly so you know in an ideal world for us you know they'd be playing for a Bangor a Carnarvon a Colwyn Bay or something like that that young bridge then they get picked off by a Wrexham and then they go and play for Wrexham in the Premier League in the future they play for Wales they win the World Cup and life is good. So building your Welsh Premier, the Kimmeru Premier without the three biggest teams it's brilliant that it's a blessing and and particularly from an international stage I'd imagine it is a blessing because you you perfectly explained the value of being exposed to the high level academy systems that England produce but then also there is a flip side which is you're trying to develop the domestic league you don't have the three biggest assets in the domestic league so what what what are the ambitions for the domestic league where where are we now and where do you want to go the league itself is um in its coefficient is one of the lower in europe because i say there's no other country in europe where your top teams all play in a different system the only comparable example is lichtenstein where vadu is playing the swiss second division the one top team um which which works really well for lichtenstein for the national team and so on so we're a really unique situation because of history and we've chosen to embrace that but what that means is that you take out the top cities and you're left with big towns across Wales that play in the Comrie Premier Division so what we did was when I came in 2021 I looked at what was there you know what was the investment like from the association what was the strategy like from the association and the truth is there wasn't one I mean there just wasn't a plan for that league so we set about doing just that and we sat with the clubs and we looked at what we could achieve so we've changed we've built a new strategy with eight different pillars in it and next season we really ramp that up so we go to a 16 team league we will have a new media product we'll have new partners we've just gone out and hired new people at all of the clubs for the first time full-time staff like CEOs and you know community people to engage with the community all these clubs so we've put an unprecedented level of investment many millions of pounds which had never been spent before into the league and from a business perspective we were just shareholder owned it would make no sense because the money doesn't come back to us it goes back to the clubs but we really felt strategically that it was now was the time if not now when that we should invest in our own league again from business perspective may not make a lot of sense now because it's literally cash out the door to these clubs to get them fit for purpose.

38:22Noel Mooney:And when the revenue comes in, it'll go back to them. But then that's the difference between us and a shareholder-owned business. We've got the moral responsibility to grow our domestic leagues and to give it the chance to reach its full potential. We knew that needed investment. So we're spending about four million pounds, like cash out the door, into the league to give it a chance to grow. We're extremely serious about building a league that can really grow audiences. And what we've seen already, I mean, we've got two cup semifinals coming up soon where they're both sold out, or if they're not, they're very close, they will be sold out because the demand up in North Wales for football at the moment is insatiable.

38:59Noel Mooney:You've got the Wrexham story, great. But up in that area of Colwyn Bay, who came back from the English system into the Welsh system recently, Carnarvon, Bangor, Rill, all these historic towns of Welsh football, the demand for football is huge. So we've got to cater for that demand. by building better stadium. Canarbon, we're spending millions of pounds on levelling the pitch and building the surrounds with the club and that to get it right. We're hosting the under-19 European championships this summer, so the top teams in Europe and boys will be coming to North Wales across the summer. And that gives us a chance to invest in the stadiums.

39:31Noel Mooney:Again, we're spending millions of pounds in stadiums across North Wales. We're seeing clubs like Penny Bont, Barrytown, Haverford West emerging. And so what we believe is a way forward for us is to attract external investments. So we're starting to see more and more people from the likes of America coming to Wales and looking at us as the gateway into the biggest league in the world. So if you bought, for example, I don't know, Gillingham or Preston North End, with no disrespect to them, if you buy them, at the moment, then clubs are taking a lot of money from their owners to keep them even keeled, to be frank.

40:07Noel Mooney:You see clubs reporting losses of 10 and 15 million pounds a year. obviously the asset is growing which is which is great in some cases but there's a lot of risk in that and there's a lot of things that can go wrong whereas what we're seeing is more and more people who want to get involved in ownership seeing us as being a brilliant way of a pretty risk-free investment so if you buy for example a barry town that's a club that's got a history of european football you've access to champions league europa league conference league uefa competitions with at Barrytown, you'll have the support of the FAW who's really invested in the league of local council of the government behind you to develop the facilities, to develop players that can be sold on to top teams around Europe.

40:51Noel Mooney:So for me, it's an absolute no-brainer to invest in wash clubs right now. As I say, we're seeing a lot more interest coming in multi-club owners, in people coming from America in particular, looking at doing, we've a number of clubs doing due diligence at the moment to attract investment for outside. So if I was someone out there who's looking to invest in sports and football specifically we are absolutely ripe right now and you know when these new owners more and more come into the league you know the league will get stronger and stronger and then you'll have a product that will just have a you know kind of virtuous circle that just gets stronger and stronger and stronger and these investors you know you can make money from them how much of that do you think is a result of the story we've seen with rexam that has been so publicly put together in brilliant media, an incredibly clever explanation and description of the value of these organizations, not as sports assets, but as community assets.

41:41What I love about Welcome to Wrexham is the fact that you have episodes in there that don't feature football. That's where it feels like a step beyond just a sports documentary. Do you think the interest then, that you see the increased interest, comes from people realizing that you have a country that has these communities that, if you can tap into it, create a product that in sport, and particularly to American sport, is very different to what they see otherwise.

42:05Noel Mooney:I think you've captured it very well there, Charlie. I mean, the Wrexham documentary is fantastic in that, as you said, they've gone into issues like the post-industrial town. They've gone into areas like mental health and so on, unemployment, the fact that the city needs a significant lift. They've gone way beyond the football club. And I was there at the weekend. They played Ipswich on Saturday. and going around the town, you know, just the buzz around what they've brought to the city is fantastic. Now, they have particularly huge profiles, of course, and they are so savvy, of course, with media.

42:40Noel Mooney:It's just phenomenal to be around the people. They've brought in an unbelievable management team led by Michael Williamson and people like Rob Faulkner, who's the comms director I know from working at UEFA, coming from top clubs or across Europe they've brought in. So their trajectory is phenomenal. So if you look at the investment that's coming into watch football now, yes, you're looking at towns and cities where if you're looking at that, you can create a version of that, obviously something different, but you can regenerate a town, you can make a city or a town believe in itself again, and you can get the joy of owning that club and getting to know that community and supporting that community through its rise.

43:17Noel Mooney:And what we have access to is access to UEFA competition. So for example, if you take one of our clubs in the last couple of years, we're in the Champions, we're in the Europe League, sorry, and got to play against, sorry, went to the Conference League. There's so many conferences you wave for now. So they got to play against the likes of Fiorentina and Panathinaikos in the group stages. You know, and that you don't get to do by owning a club in the lower leagues in England, for example. So to see our clubs play these top European sides, that is, first of all, is a revenue generator, but also the profile that that can bring through media to a city or to a town is phenomenal.

43:53Noel Mooney:So I would say we're as ripe as any country in the world for investment now for things like that to get involved in the city but also to drive revenue as well. This is where it's really important that you're doing it centrally as well because play out a scenario you have an individual investor let's say Rob and Ryan come in and they invest in a club in the Welsh Premier you do that in the system you have one club that is far above and the rest don't see the tide lift and so they stand out too far the competition isn't there. They don't play necessarily against equally matched teams. You need the whole league to lift together to an extent, to create the competitive environment, to attract great players across who not just play for the teams, but make sure the great players are competing against the best players.

44:36So that when those opportunities come then to get into Europe or play against those bigger clubs, there's less of a ledge, there's less of a cliff to climb.

44:43Noel Mooney:Absolutely. So if I was an investor coming in, I'd want to look in the eyes of the CEO of the governing body. We run the league within the association, whereas that's different in Scotland and England and Northern Ireland. It's outside of the association. We manage the league within the association. So if I was an investor to come in, I'd want to look at the people I'm investing in and say, are these people serious about what they're trying to do? Anyone looking at the FAA will see that we're very, very serious in all of the things we're trying to do. With the league itself, we've sent a signal to the market by investing millions of pounds ourselves of our own reserves into this league.

45:16Noel Mooney:And we've got the relationship. One of the great things about Wales is our sense of team, team comely as we call it, where we can pull basically all of the movers and shakers from Wales, not just from sport, but from public life, whether it's first ministers, whether it's local authority leaders, into a room in a few days' notice. And if you're investing in us, you will have us, you will have a really supportive government, you'll have a supportive local authority, and you can make ground really quickly. We can remove bureaucracy really quickly to help your investment to land. So, you know, again, anyone coming out can see our strategy for the league.

45:54Noel Mooney:They can see that we are really serious about building a great media product. And they can see that they can play, they can help shape that vision as well, of course, that it wouldn't be arm's length relationship. We want to embrace someone investing in any of our clubs to be part of the future of the league itself so they can shape the future decisions for the league. And again, if you're American, let's say you're more used to structures where you can have a relationship with the league and that league is influential across its clubs rather than having the situations we have. Well, let me rephrase actually.

46:25Noel Mooney:If we had enough owners come in that were like-minded, we would have absolutely no objections to letting the league sit outside of the association, for example. So if you had a plethora of owners that sat around the table and wanted to bring the league in a certain direction, then what you tend to see in a lot of leagues, I think most leagues in Europe now are outside of the association because they're driven by media rights. And once you've got media rights, it's how that's distributed and so on. Clubs like to have control of their own destiny. And we're not precious about it, by the way. You know, if enough owners came in, they were like-minded and it was the right thing to do.

47:00Noel Mooney:It was the right thing to do for Irish football, which is crucial. Then we'd be really open to an ownership taking on the league. what you'll find is the association would still have a strong stake, like a golden share or something around the regulatory side. So the licensing of the league, match officials, I suppose the boring regulatory kind of stuff, you'll find the association will still be in. But the ownership of a league that sits outside of association is normally interested in the media rights, the marketing, the communications, the decisions around the league, you know, how to really move the league forward.

47:31Noel Mooney:And we're really open to what that looks like in the future. What are attendances like? so what you're finding is we're going to go step by step so we would be looking to get to a thousand in the next couple of years as an average across the league but what you're seeing already is in North Wales in particular is us exceeding that quite quickly so like I saw for example a game the day Colwyn Bay were playing it was 15-1600 for a normal league game we saw a tier 3 game a tier 3 team the other day Bangor play in a cup match and there was nearly 3000 there so what we've decided to do is to really invest in infrastructure because as they say if you build it they will come we've worked closely with UEFA governments and so on to local authorities to build them and we're seeing that anything we're building is attracting big attendances so we believe that we can get to two three thousand over the next few years as as average attendances and then who knows from there we've got to build it step by step so we're you know we're being realistic about what is possible you have to remember that in north wales for example wrexham it's a brilliant story for us but the interest around them of course attracts people towards that i was going to say do people have two teams though you know do your wrexham fans and your cardiff fans and your swansea fans do you find them also having a local team a team that plays in welsh division rather than in the english divisions it's quite interesting some of you've got people who've got three teams where they might support um you know a liverpool promiscuous a Liverpool a Cardiff City and a Barry Town at the same time you get that too and I think you shouldn't be too precious about that as well that you want people to engage at your club and you understand the power of the Premier League of course and what it has then you've got I mean as I said we're so lucky in Wales the system that we have we're blessed with the infrastructure that we have we've got a Cardiff City who are on the way hopefully to be promoted back up to the Championship next season we'll have three teams hopefully in the championship.

49:29Noel Mooney:Maybe Rex can get into the Premier League this year. Who knows? The way they're going, you couldn't write that off as well. It'd be back to back to back to back. I think it would be that stage. I think the Premier League would like that. Yeah, of course. So like it's just a really joyful time. As I say, if I look back at what Swansea have done, then if you look at what we're doing with the league, it's such an exciting time to be involved in West football. It feels like there's a lot of home runs happening around us. It's just to manage that in the right way to make sure it goes at the right speed.

49:54Noel Mooney:And I suppose if you go back to the business model, there is also the other side to that which is that we're investing so much into things that haven't been invested in in the past like for example grassroots facilities are taking a lot of resources quite rightfully our domestic leagues you know we've got the women's game which is growing really fast but is a huge investment as well we're investing heavily in the women's game at all levels for it to fulfill its potential but that is an investment and the thing for us is if you're investing in the women's game, if you're investing in our men's top flight to get that to reach its full potential, if you're investing in the grassroots facilities, the issue for us is trying to manage that because we don't have this massive commercial portfolio of the association.

50:42Noel Mooney:We do need to get more commercial deals in to back that up. So while we've been profitable so far, we're starting to get into a situation where there's a minus on the P &L. And that's interesting because we were lucky in European football, bizarrely, I would say, in some ways, we quite a large reserve. You know, we've got benchmarking across other associations. We had quite a good pot of money. And what we chose to do is to proactively invest into the game for a few years and to really move on. We've got Euro28 coming, which brings its own financial rewards. And the hosting of that has its own rewards as well, by the way.

51:14Noel Mooney:So, you know, what we're looking at doing is taking it instead of a year by year to do it in that cycle, like UEFA or FIFA or, you know, I heard Bill Sweeney on your show talking about the way it should be viewed, and he's quite right, it's a cycle. So if you take it year by year, you can actually miss opportunities. So your risk tolerance is really important in this. So the association that I took on was one that was very conservative in its P &L, I would say, which is good because it meant that they built up really good reserves. The problem was there was no investments in the grassroots game.

51:48Noel Mooney:There was no investments in the domestic league in reality. And the knock on effect of that is that goes up to a lack of performance. Exactly. It's stagnation. So what we're trying to balance now is the fact that we're going into a minus in the P &L for a couple of years. Obviously, we do know we can top back up our reserves in 28 and 29 through euros. But at the same time, you know, with our board, with our finance, auditing risk committee, we've worked very well, I think, on our risk tolerance. And we're kind of on the edge of it now. We're at that stage where people are kind of, you know, it's a bit edgy around.

52:21Noel Mooney:I'm getting edgy myself. Knowing full well that we're bearing huge fruits from it, but at the same time mindful of it also. The interesting thing with investing and looking at it financially in cycles is often then you have once every four years or once every two years, if you're looking at in football, Euros and World Cups, you know, you have those big spikes. That's great. The bigger challenge in cycles is how do you maintain or how do you create more value in, should we say, the down years, the fallow years? Has something like, you know, you've been, again, involved in international football for a while.

52:54Has something like the Nations League, do these things move the needle? Do they improve the system for national federations? And most importantly here, I'm not looking at the Englands and the Frances. I'm looking at the federations that are slightly smaller, who will really see the impact of better structures, more competition, better commercial opportunities. Yeah.

53:17Noel Mooney:The UEFA have done a terrific job in the competitions over the last decade or so. You know, they've really kind of gone from, I suppose, being pretty conservative in their competitions, apart from 1992 when they set up the Champions League, which was a big step forward. There was a kind of conservative nature there, I would say. Over the last decade, they have supercharged everything, really, in terms of things like Conference League, for example. It's been brilliant for countries like us, where teams could go on and play in group stages in European club football. Nations League is a fantastic concept because what you had was friendlies that people were not interested in.

53:50Noel Mooney:If you take us, we're in Nations League A now. We won the group. So the last couple of weeks, we were in Brussels for the draw for the Nations League. And I was sitting with Craig looking at the draw coming out. And obviously, we could have drawn France, Spain, England, you name it. I mean, it was literally a who's who of the big hitters, if you want to call it that. We drew Portugal, Denmark, and Norway. Really interesting because we haven't played quite a few of these in a long time. and you know we've got confidence about us now that we can take on any of these countries on and off the pitch which is important as an association we feel as good as any of them in how we operate how we operate ourselves strategically and operationally and so on but also on the pitch the way we're playing football you know when that golden generation of 2016 finished us was one of the dangers was that we would fall back we're now the top table playing as the top sides all the time and that generate I mean if you take ticket sales for the three of them, for example, you know, I expect us to sell out for the three of them.

54:45Whereas if that was a friendly, I'm not going to name any countries, actually, just to have

54:49Noel Mooney:total respect for all of our neighbouring countries. You know, if you if you named a country that maybe is in pot C or D, you're going to struggle to, you know, to get beyond 20, 25 ,000 for a game of that. Whereas when you're playing against the Portugal, Norway or Denmark, you know, or, you know, obviously you go to the France or Germany because we're playing in that neighbourhood. We're filling the stadia. And that definitely has, of course, that has an impact on our P &L and what we're able to do. So Nations League for us. And I would say when I meet my UEFA colleagues from different associations, nobody has a bad word to say about it.

55:19Noel Mooney:It's just we found our different levels. I'm really excited the way UEFA are approaching competitions in terms of constant evolution now. We're having a debate at the moment with the future qualifiers, for example. That hasn't landed yet. But I know from the conversation so far, that's all going into a very exciting place. So I'd say UEFA have done a terrific job. I think what we'd like to see in its conversation over the next couple of years is with the World Cup, for example, generating so much money now because of the interest in the sport globally, is trying to get more money back into the associations from the governing bodies like UEFA and FIFA.

55:53Noel Mooney:And I mean, they will say they're doing the best they can. That's a discussion to have over the years ahead that as these competitions are garnering more and more money. I mean, from a World Cup, we're in a different position to rugby, for example, where it costs them money to go to the World Cup. For us, we make a profit because of the sheer size of football and the global interest in every country in the world. We make money from going to these tournaments. FIFA and UEFA make a lot of money from these tournaments. And, you know, we, to continue our sustainable growth, apart from our own commercial performance, we'd like to see more and more money coming out of these tournaments back into these associations.

56:2748 teams, are you in support of growing these competitions?

56:30Noel Mooney:Yeah, it can bear us. I mean, there's no doubt about that. I mean, you see some emerging countries, you know, coming into the tournaments which is interesting and for them you've got to get the balance right it's about yes there's the commercial side but football's not actually about that it's about bringing hope and joy and you know to countries like look at Haiti and Kershaw and that going to these tournaments fabulous you know absolutely brilliant the tournaments can bear it you know it's okay I think it's really fine for the women's Euros for example we were part of 16 teams that played in the women's Euros last summer we believe that tournament can go to 24 sooner than it actually is because there's countries that weren't there.

57:07Noel Mooney:Like if you take in our neck of the woods, Scotland, Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland, weren't at this, yours, women's yours, these countries would have brought so much to that tournament. So we think that the women's yours can bring 24 teams, can bear 24 teams. We do think that the World Cups can bring 48 teams. I think it goes in the right direction. I don't see any real issue. Some people will say, does it diminish the competition? I just think it's really interesting and fun for the countries. And it's fun and interesting for people who aren't from their countries to learn about these countries from playing in the tournament.

57:40Noel Mooney:The human interest stories around the World Cup, for me, are the best part of it. So I say this country is coming into it. It could change the economic profile of their country, not the Football Association, of the country. I mean, growing up in a pretty depressed Ireland in the 1980s, the success that Jack Charlton had with the men's national team in 1988. I mean, a lot of us grew up in the UK. I mean, I was born in London in the shadow of Arsenal Stadium, for example, in Holloway Road. And football was certainly not the number one sport. I moved back to Ireland when I was four. And the indigenous sports, Hurling Gaelic football, were clearly the biggest sport where I was growing up.

58:15Noel Mooney:And it was really encouraged to play Hurling Gaelic football. But soccer was in my heart because I grew up in London. And when Jack came along with that team, mostly made up of immigrants, you know, who lived in the UK, it was my story. You know, it's the story that many of us who had grown up in London, come back or different parts of the UK had come back to Ireland. You know, for us, it was a really romantic story. These and the first games, as you may know, was your 1988. We played England. And England had Peter Shilton and Brian Robson and all these Gary Lineker and all these superstars, John Barnes and all these megastars.

58:54Noel Mooney:And we were a team of lots of immigrants who played that game. We won. It was an immigrant who scored, Ray Houghton, who has never lived in Ireland. You know, he's a Scot who lived in London and so on. So it was our story unfolding before our eyes, beating England at, you know, what people say was their own sport, pretty much. That didn't just change the country from a sporting perspective. Goalposts, football goalposts sprang up all over Ireland. 2 ,000 clubs were almost born out of that moment. But the Celtic Tigers, they say, was born. There's academic papers that said that that moment gave the country such a confidence boost in itself and made Irish people believe in themselves even more that the Celtic Tiger was born out of the success of the international football team.

59:36Noel Mooney:And today, football is still the support that can get people in Wales or across these nations. You know, it can galvanize the whole nation behind them. And that is the power. When you talk about places like Haiti, who've gone through a horrendous time, this country is going into this World Cup. we've had really difficult economic situations. The World Cup can transform their own economies. It's the power of sport. Power of sport. How important is the heritage of some players? For smaller countries where we were talking off air before we came on, you were telling me about the value of having Carl Darlow come in and become goalkeeper.

1:00:08Now that's come later in his career. But he's got a family history of Wales. There's been lots of commentary around. I think it was Harvey Barnes going to Scotland recently. but you know when you're Scotland when you're Wales when you're Ireland and you have England where you will have lots of people who are Irish Scottish and Welsh living in England for you to be on top of that for you to recognize when there are opportunities to bring brilliant players in who completely legitimately have a right to play for Wales into that setup really interesting for

1:00:38Noel Mooney:this for me because as an Irish person going to Wales I was really taken by the connection between the players and what they were playing for and their connection to each other. And playing for Wales means so much to them. So if you look at the Irish situation, for example, Declan Rice and Jack Grealish came in and played right through the system and played, I mean, I think Declan has three caps at senior level for Ireland and ultimately chose to play for England. And he's gone on to have a fantastic career, of course, with England. And Jack Grealish, the same, has gone on to be a super footballer and plenty of caps and so on.

1:01:14Noel Mooney:In Wales, we're really lucky because I'm not aware of any player that we've lost in modern times at all. So the association, the people around the national teams do a brilliant job of when the player comes in, that they just want, they feel it instantly. We've got Ian Gwynn-Hughes, who's been with the FAW for a long time. He has a way of working with the team coaches and that to really connect the players to Wales and what it means to play for Wales. And, you know, I've heard stories going in about what Gary Speed did, for example, where he made the anthem so important. The Welsh language is really important to people, that sense of connection to what it means to be Welsh.

1:01:57Noel Mooney:I was really taken by that from the word go. And it gives me a huge confidence that when players come in all the different age groups, that they're going to fall in love instantly what they're playing for. Some will have closer connections than others, naturally. but when I look at it now I just see a huge connection between the players and playing for Wales and have zero fears that we would lose a player I mean it can happen for different reasons but it just doesn't happen to us and it's something that we're really conscious of even though it's a national team set up of course it's like a club team I'm convinced some of the players don't even want to go back to their clubs at times they love playing for Wales so much I'm really struck by that all the different age groups whether it's male or female they just love playing for Wales and as I say as someone who's not Welsh that really struck me and it's something that it's a magic it's a secret sauce if you will that we have to make sure that we don't just keep but that we keep strengthening so that someone like carol dardo has come in and been fantastic for us whether they've grown up in wales or they've grown up in surrey that they feel that connection and they absolutely love the dragon on their shirts and it's something that we have to protect and enhance at all costs the manager's position is always an interesting discussion at international level, particularly on nationality.

1:03:11You're an Irishman doing an amazing job running the Welsh FA. But managers seem to divide opinion when looking at getting, should we say, the best available manager on the market to come and manage a national team or to get a Welshman managing Wales?

1:03:24Noel Mooney:I don't think you need to be Welsh to manage Wales. I don't believe that. But again, you have to look at the deck of cards that you have and you have to look at what's the best for what the association is trying to do at the time. And what we have is a system that works really well for us. We've got a really strong coach education system, one of the best in the world. So some of the top coaches in the world come through Wales to become coaches. And so they should, because, you know, we really are top, top at coach education. But we've got something that's worked. If you go back to even before Gary Speed's time, you've just got a plethora of people who've played for Wales, like John Toshek before that, and so on, who've played for Wales and gone on to be really successful managers for Wales and then gone on to be good club managers and so on.

1:04:04Noel Mooney:So there's literally a list of them. You've got Gary Speed, you've got Mark Hughes before that. You've got Chris Coleman. Yes, Chris Coleman. You've got Ryan Giggs, you've got Rob Page, who's Liverpool now, and obviously Craig. Now, these are all people who've played for Wales. So I suppose if you get down to it, we haven't got this written anywhere, but when you get down to it, you're looking into someone's eyes. And like any arrangement or relationship or partnership, you look in their eyes and you say, how much does this mean to them? So if you go into the situation where Craig came in, for example, there was a list of names out there.

1:04:38Noel Mooney:I mean, our chief football officer would gather the profiles and the type of coaches that you want for the role. But within, I would say, seconds of meeting Craig, when I looked into his eyes and I saw what it meant to him and, you know, we knew what he could do coaching-wise. Tactically, he was perfect for us. The way he wanted the games he played, the way he could take the profile of the players, which was crucial, because the profile of players we had needed a particular type of coach. Craig wouldn't have come, nor would he be the right coach for us if it was a different type. What we had was perfect for him, and he was perfect for us.

1:05:16Noel Mooney:And really, within seconds, I knew that he was perfect for us, and our chief football officer, Dave Adams, we were so aligned on this. And when the next coach, whenever Craig goes on to manage whoever he manages after, because he's an absolutely outstanding coach. We're so lucky to have him. He's a world-class coach. Both tactically and... Absolute genius. I can't stop listening to him. He talks to me about a game, and I am just blown. I've met many, many coaches. He's the one for me who stands out as just on a different level, how he talks about the game. So we've absolutely no doubt that Craig will go on and manage the top teams in the world in the future.

1:05:52Noel Mooney:No question about that for us. But we're so lucky now he's doing his national duty with us. He's learning things, of course. He's getting better. Every day I see him, he's getting stronger. But he's the perfect person for us. And not just that, by the way, it's the backroom team that he's assembled around him. So the likes of Pete, who he'd worked with previously at the City Group, the likes of Andrew Croft, who's at Brighton, who worked with De Zerbe, and is at Brighton now, who's fantastic in certain areas, brilliant coach as well. So we've got many, many different coaches around Craig who are perfect to make that teamwork.

1:06:27Noel Mooney:So we give ourselves, we really back ourselves. But if you look at whoever replaces Craig in the future, it's our job now to prepare for if Craig goes. We hope he's got a contract until Euro 28. I'm sure he'll be with us until Euro 28 when we host the Euros. But you can't be naive either. I mean, if Barcelona turns up and says, look, we'd love Craig to be the manager and he's the one for us, then you've got to kind of go, So, you know, there's a reality to the situation as well that we've got to be cognizant of. He was linked with Jobs recently, for example. I mean, Celtic, for example, he played for Celtic.

1:07:01Noel Mooney:He was there. That's a massive club and so on. So you've got to be kind of pragmatic about it. So we would be working in the background on if something suddenly happened, who do you go for? And then you go back to the point you made about being Welsh. I think by and large, you'll find that someone who's played for Wales has grown up there, who understands what it means. there's naturally an attraction towards that but you can't rule out it's got to be the best person for the jobs if you look at the profile it's worked for us that it has been former welsh internationals if you look at the women's team for example rian wilkinson has brought us to our first major tournament she is canadian but she's welsh descent she's got huge links to wales and we're very lucky in the boat coaches understand what it means who they're representing and they represent us magnificently.

1:07:48It's a very different breed from managing internationally to managing domestically. So there's another side of it there where you have to look at, and you look at what happened with England recently and the amazing players that they had, it was the thing for years, wasn't it? How do you not get this group of players playing together? And then you look at what Gareth supposedly did so well at international football, so much more because you get so little time. You get the odd two weeks or not even at some camps. it's really about the atmosphere I'd imagine that you create and then of course finding the best way in that short period of time to get those guys and girls playing in a particular way that best suits them that that to me seems like a real a real skill and if you have someone to play for who you believe in and you follow at international level that must give you another

1:08:35Noel Mooney:20-30 percent look international football football that level it's high pressure stuff it's high the players to win them over, to get them to buy into your philosophy, to buy into you as a person. I mean, you can, you know, you pick the person you think will do that. And we've been so fortunate. We've done our planning, I would say, pretty well. But we've also been fortunate that the likes of Rian and Craig have connected so well with their players and many of our youth team coaches and so on. But they are details people. So the work they put in, it's like when you're given a presentation, 95 % of the work is done before you start the presentation.

1:09:14Noel Mooney:You know, you prepare to succeed. They put in immense work. If I talk about our two senior coaches, I watch Rain and Craig a lot. The amount of preparation they have is that 95%. So when the players come in, it's pretty meticulous. They have it down to a tee. They have got when they need to relax with players, you know, the tone to have around the place or when you need to crank it up. I can see that really clearly. They have that in shed loads of it, to be fair. So we're really fortunate we have that. It's something you'd look for in the profile of someone. It was one of the thoughts I had around Craig, actually, with our chief football officer, which was, Craig is intense about football, is the best way to frame it.

1:09:52Noel Mooney:He loves the game so much. His mind is moving so fast with the game. He's evolving all of the time. I suppose one of the only thoughts we had was, when we met him the first time, he was up in Burnley's training ground, he was in full armoury. He had his Burnley tracksuit on. he was in full mode if you want to call it that I think one of the thoughts we had was how would he adapt to international football and he's done it amazingly that said you can see by him that he is full on he's switched on all of the time about the game and there is part of me that does look forward to us releasing him back into the wild of club football because that's probably where he's going to reach his full potential with us in his international stuff and he's doing brilliant things for us, getting us promoted from B to A, hopefully getting us to our World Cup now and having a magnificent year in 2020-28, which is great for everybody.

1:10:49Noel Mooney:It's great for him, it's great for his family, it's great for the players, it's great for himself. But there will come a stage where he'll put back on his full armoury and go back out into club football. And probably if I was asked, do I think he's better suited to club football, I would say he is probably because he's that full on with the game. he's just a force of nature and a force of thinking so I think this is a nice time for us in that he's getting the chance to get all of his game models or whatever these things are ready for when he does go back to the club game and he'll go back at full force and he'll reach the very top in that way then you've got the personal situations I mean Rian Wilkinson the manager of our women's team has recently had her first child which is great it's great to see people reaching their full potential as human beings as well their family situations and so on So with Craig and Rian, you look at their family side and I can see that they're both very happy in their family lives.

1:11:43Noel Mooney:They really like living in Wales now. That's really important. You don't want anybody around the place who's not happy, who's not, who's miserable. You want them to be at their best selves at home so that they're their best selves in front of the players when the players do come in. And I think we've got a very happy family. We've got a very happy environment for the players that come in. We do have challenges around the physical environment, so we've really built up our base. so if you go St George's Park for example you know they've got huge resources here in England if you go to some of the training grounds I see in the like the Leicester cities or the Stoke cities even you go to the likes of Tottenham their training grounds are five star hotels type thing with us our revenues are far less than say the English FA or the French FA or so on so we've had to manage to build up facilities that are you know inching certainly towards Premier League facilities without having the money of a Premier League club We do that very much with the players, I would say, and that's where we're like a club.

1:12:37Noel Mooney:So if you take, for example, logistics around the travel to far-flung destinations like Kazakhstan, as an example. So before we went into this campaign, we sit with the players, we sat with the players, and we agreed the size of the plane, the type of hotels they wanted to stay in, in discussion with the players. Now, to be frank, there's a huge cost to that because obviously the player is going to want the very best flights, and we want them to have the best flights. We want them to have the best hotels. But because our revenues are not huge, it's a constant balancing act. High performance is not cheap.

1:13:11Noel Mooney:So we look at the two-year cycle and we say, look, this is the income. This is the expenditure. And I have to say over the last few years, the high performance costs are growing exponentially. I can tell you they're way beyond inflation. That is for sure. Because the demands that are coming in different areas, whether it's cryotherapy, whether it's psychology, you know whether it's particular types of data analytics new software all these different things that you the players are used to that is growing exponentially and unfortunately for us our revenues are not growing exponentially in that way and that is a pressure on us so you get players coming from primary clubs or top championship clubs you can't send them to Kazakhstan via multiple easy jet flights they won't do it or I mean if they do it it creates an environment that's unworkable so if you take I mean trip to Kazakhstan is a great is a great example because you're trying to fly from Cardiff without stopping to Astana which is an eight or nine hour flight now to do that to charter that out and back is the guts of 400 ,000 pounds way beyond our budget and what you normally so if you look at normally you're like you're flying to somewhere like Brussels you know which would be 100 ,000 this is multiples of that going to Kazakhstan so when Kazakhstan comes out of the draw as much as we love our friends in Kazakhstan there is a groan from the CFO who says oh my god we've got Kazakhstan it's the furthest place you can go and and so on so great for our fans because it's a great experience to go to Kazakhstan our fans were loved over there and it's a great place to to visit but for us from a purely logistics perspective is really difficult so you've also got the fact that you're trying to get three points out there So when we went to Kazakhstan, it's that eight, nine hour flight.

1:14:54Noel Mooney:We set out with the objective of flying direct from Cardiff to Kazakhstan without stopping. Now, we're also aware of club teams that played out in Kazakhstan who haven't gone direct. And these are clubs with revenues far in excess of what we would have. So you're minded to kind of go. And that's a difficult conversation with the team and with everyone saying, well, there's clubs that got much bigger revenues than us, have much bigger financial incentive. and obviously we've got to get our P &L to try and work, that they're stopping in Istanbul or somewhere like that to get fuel to go on again.

1:15:28Noel Mooney:But we believe that our players, if we can, we try and give them the very, very best experience. We always try and do it and we want them to have it. So we agree with the players that we go direct from Cardiff to Astana and there was a premium for that. But again, when you win 1-0 and when you hang on in the closing moments and you get on the plane and you've got three points in your pocket and you're flying back, then you kind of go, do you know what? The players keep delivering for us. You know, the women's team, the men's team. Another example being we went to Dublin to play in a playoff to qualify for the women's Euro.

1:16:04Noel Mooney:Now, there's plenty of flights from Cardiff to Dublin. So someone came to me at a request to say they want to go charter from Cardiff to Dublin. The flight is about 40 minutes. You're literally putting your seatbelts on and you're landing. You have barely time for a cup of coffee. But the charter flight was somewhere in the age of 30 ,000 pounds. And like my first reaction is, hang on, this Ryanair is flying there 40 minutes. But then you realize you're talking about high performance. And the thing is, yes, they could take Ryanair, but they'd have to get up at five o 'clock in the morning. And their sleeping pattern is broken.

1:16:36Noel Mooney:We go to Dublin. We were 2-0 up. They score with, I don't know, a few minutes to go. and there's a long injury time, I would have paid the 30 grand myself for that charter flight because you can see the players need every moment of sleep. They need the right nutrition. They need the right cycles. So the fact that we got them to charter flight, we hung on with our fingernails and we got to our first major tournament. That's when you see the investment in high performance. They took their moments and that kind of reinforces the argument to ourselves that an investment in high performance yields fruit.

1:17:11When you're looking at margins and you're looking at the variables you control, it actually makes you realize how important that is. That could seem like a nice little anecdote on the side to what you're doing. But actually, as you said, a bad experience creates a bad atmosphere within the squad. They don't get enough sleep. They're not prepared for the game. They don't warm up properly. Not only the result goes bad, maybe you get an injury. The knock-on effect of that is significant. So what may seem insignificant and a luxury at the beginning is actually a key facilitator in performance.

1:17:44Noel Mooney:There's also a wider point which is trust between everybody involved in performance. So when you meet the leadership team or the players or the coaching staff for example when they look into your eyes they have to feel that you are there to give them the best possible opportunity of success and when you look in their eyes that they are up to give everything they've got to be successful. And that's when you get the great stories. You know, when you get trust between people, as you know, great things happen. So I would struggle to deal with a group if I wasn't giving everything that I have as an association that you weren't.

1:18:16Noel Mooney:So when you get the fine margins, as you quite rightly point out, when you get trust between people, when we understand what it takes to succeed in them moments, we believe great things happen. We've seen it many, many times now with our teams that when we're all together, we've got it's a slogan but it's lived it's called Together Stronger it goes back to 2016 Chris Coleman spoke about it the other night actually at a celebration for the 10 year anniversary of 2016 that was lived by everybody backroom team the people who clean our buildings Together Stronger really means that so when you talk about the FAW we believe we're an organisation that think again whether you're cleaning they're putting people on the moon that we aren't and that gives us a chance to beat France to beat Germany to beat England when we're together like that.

1:19:01Noel Mooney:So when we're all working on the best thing for each other, the environments are the best they possibly can be, then we believe we've got a real chance. And it strikes me that you do that. If we look at how you're sitting here today, we've talked about your relationship with Craig. Ben Davis, your captain, introduced us. The relationship, from how he spoke to me about you and from what you've told me, the relationship between the two of you sounds like it's fantastic. How important is he? Let's give him the credit that he's due. How important is he as the national team captain in his involvement with you, in the connectivity between the executive and the players, in the professionalism and the support and intelligence that he brings?

1:19:41How important is that to a successful footballing team at a national level?

1:19:45Noel Mooney:So Ben is an icon in Wales. He's someone who's a leader, a leader of people, a leader of men, a leader of any room he walks into, I would say. we're so lucky that we've got a captain who is one of the brightest people I've come across you know when you look in someone's eyes and you see this person is on a different intellectual level to a lot of people I would say is the best way of framing it he's so bright he's so driven in what he's doing that he's someone who has grown up in in Wales and gone on to become a Premier League at one of the top clubs in the world. So that speaks volumes in the first instance.

1:20:22Noel Mooney:But you look at him now and he could be anything. I mean, he could be the CEO of Apple as far as I'm concerned. He's that bright that he could lead a nation itself. He could be a prime minister. He could be a first minister. He could be a president of a country. He's that bright. And so to have someone like that who's got gravitas, both from the playing sense, from his history of rolling up his sleeves literally with the captain's armband on and taking teams at big moments, through big, high-pressure situations, in the trenches, if you will, there's no question that he's the person, if you go to war, you want leading your side.

1:20:58Noel Mooney:Then if you look at how he's evolving as a person, it's brilliant to watch it because hopefully he's got plenty of years left as a Premier League footballer, as captain of Wales. We see him leading us out in Euro 28 with the armband on and hopefully trying to win that tournament in 2028 and beyond. but then he's somebody that he can galvanize a group so he's the bridge he is between you know craig and his background team between the players i watched him the other night actually we were in in downing street watching the way the players look up to him he introduced the keir starmer for example it was the invitation that we had to to to meet him a lot of the players you know well all of the players their livelihoods are here pretty much in in in england so they live here so it's It was a great opportunity for us to get together.

1:21:48Noel Mooney:I watched the way they look at him. And he is a leader of people. So we're lucky in that our captain is beyond the captain, that he's just a leader.

1:21:59Noel Mooney:And we have got this together stronger thing. And if your captain is like he is, then it's just another layer of opportunity that we have for success. That's an incredibly nice segment for him. We won't tell him that. No, we will. Look, Noel, finally, I just have, you know, one more on the kind of personal side for you and how you look at all of this. You know, where do you, firstly, you know, I'd love to know where a lot of the enjoyment comes and where the interest and passion is, but also where you see personally the most opportunity and where I guess the most challenge also lies for you that you're trying to combat.

1:22:37Noel Mooney:Yeah, I spoke a bit about Craig earlier as a coach, I suppose, and I said Ben, you know, these, and Rian, like they're all in. They're all into what they're doing. and they're completely focused. And you get people who just live in, they're in full flow, they're in the moment. And that's what I look for. What is full flow? And for me, I feel in full flow what we're doing. I feel completely all in on what we're doing. It's not a job, if you will. It's a vocation. It's something that the whole ecosystem, I mean, we're a members organization. I say we have 900 clubs that look to you for governance, for leadership, for resources, for direction, for strategy, for all these different things.

1:23:11Noel Mooney:I feel very well equipped to lead Welsh football with a history of cross-European football. I haven't been a player myself. I understand the playing side. You're doing my coaching side. I understand the coaching side. So I feel quite rounded to do the job. I feel I'm the right person at this moment to lead Welsh football through to 2030, which I think is the right time to hand over the baton to someone who's much better than me to take to the next level. But I think that it was a perfect match, actually, between Wales and myself. Now what you do is you bring brilliant people who are much better than yourself around you, which I've managed to do.

1:23:45Noel Mooney:So we've got a team at the FAW that's really driven, that's really focused. We've got a clear plan to use football to create a better Wales. It's not about creating a better football. It's about creating a better country through what we do. We've got the right values in place. We've got the right, yeah, the right people in place. I think the challenge that we have is the resources. So the problem with a national and government body is that there's so much you want to do, like getting more girls to play football, like getting to more World Cups and Euros. to getting more stadiums built so you know and it's just it's endless to being better at safeguarding for example which is so important to make sure that people play football in a safe and fun environment so you're like a government the demands come from everywhere and trying to make sure that you've got your resources in the right place that's our biggest challenge is getting our resources right for the future we are not the biggest country in the whole world so it means that we don't have the profile of companies that you'd have in london or manchester or places like that or even dublin for example or or edinburgh maybe so that's a challenge for us is getting people to invest in us we're very clear in what we're doing um we're very focused on these areas so our strategy we launched a new 10-year strategy this summer it'll focus very much on driving participation further and further we're by far and away the biggest sport in wales from a participation and an interest perspective which is great but we've a lot more to do we're not complacent we're clear there but also in the high performance as we've discussed making sure that we continue to evolve our high performance the pathways of players coming through to make sure that we keep building on the success we feel we've got everything in place what you're starting to look at now is 2026 i've got another three or four years there so you're handing over to a group of people that as i say can take to a better place and i'm now looking at that succession planning for how do we get the people into different roles across the organization so that we can be sustainably successful.

1:25:37Noel Mooney:So just say in 2035, we'll hopefully host the Women's World Cup here, our first World Cup. So we've got our first Euros in 2028, the Men's Euros. We've got, hopefully in April, it'll be announced that we'll have our first Women's World Cup. So a Euros and a World Cup for the first time coming. That's a fantastic, I won't be here when we host the Women's World Cup, but I'll hopefully be watching it going. We built something really special in the time that we had together. we built something that our aim is to build the best football association in the world we're well on the way to getting there and to do that you need to be really agile and really together it's our secret sauce which as i say france germany usa may not have we have that closeness we've got really bright people around us so getting us on that journey towards becoming one of the great football associations of the world i feel we're in a really good place to do that and it's just to really drive that home over the next few years.

1:26:30Such a powerful way to wrap it up. I mean this as wholeheartedly as I can as an Englishman. I really hope that it goes well in the qualifiers. I really hope you make it there in the summer. It is fascinating to see inside a national governing body and understand what it's really like and the kind of different situations and pressures that you have to manage and I've no doubt people will have loved it. But also you and and how you as a non-Welshman yourself have put yourself in the position and clearly have such a deep affinity and connection with this. It's a privilege to listen to it, and thank you for being so open and informative and interesting about all of this.

1:27:07I really appreciate it.

1:27:08Noel Mooney:Thank you, Charlie. It's been a pleasure to be on your show. What a show. I hope you enjoyed hearing from a person at the top of the chain on the international scene as much as I did. This was so different, and I have a very different appreciation for the job of leading one of the top federations. So many things to consider, so many people to represent on both the professional and grassroots end. A huge thank you to Noel for joining us and I hope you enjoyed the show. Now, if you want to see more from today's show, you can do so by going to YouTube or any of our other social channels across Instagram and TikTok.

1:27:41There are more snippets to share and bite-sized chunks to consume. And whilst you're there, please do like, subscribe and follow the show As you will hear from your other favourite pods, it makes a huge difference when bringing you the best guests and conversations from around the world of sports, which is of course our endless aim. Thank you again for tuning in and we'll see you next week. 25 years ago, Moneyball revolutionised baseball. Then football sporting directors learnt the collect more data lesson. And now, mission accomplished. Clubs have 60 times more information than they did then.

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