The challenge of maximising income from Ireland's particularly difficult draw for the next European Championships in 2000 did not prevent FAI officials from striking an upbeat note yesterday.

At a time when their counterparts in the Irish Football Association in Belfast are hoping to earn almost £2 million from the television rights for their home game against Germany, Dublin must resign itself to the prospect of significantly smaller takings.

Balkan countries are not among the most captivating in football and while Yugoslavia and Croatia would adorn any list of Europe's most formidable teams, the inescapable fact is that they don't appeal to the commercial world. Against that background, the FAI is bracing itself for a tough marketing exercise, but Bernard O'Byrne, the association's chief executive, believes that the challenge is not insurmountable.

"There appears to be an insatiable market in Europe for televised football and with the marketing expertise now available to us, we hope to exploit that situation," he said. "Were we drawn against countries like Germany, England or Italy, people would be beating a path to our door.

"That is not now going to happen, but we must still make the most of the fact that group eight contains two teams who will be expected to do very well in the World Cup finals in France this summer."

O'Byrne is to meet with Mick McCarthy this week to discuss strategy for the meeting in Skopje on February 19th and 20th when dates and venues will be set for all games in group eight. Because of the Balkan majority in the group, negotiations are going to prove difficult, but the Irish are still determined not to concede on vital issues.

These include a veto on starting their programme in either Yugoslavia or Croatia. The preferred option is a home game at Lansdowne Road in September or a visit to Malta, either of which would be expected to yield the early points which the manager believes could be vital to the morale of his squad.

In the meantime, they can busy themselves with the task of dissuading the Czech football federation from moving Ireland's March 25th fixturefrom Prague to a provincial setting. The match was accepted by the FAI on the basis that it would be staged in the capital, but the Czechs now see it as an opportunity to placate provincial demands for more international football.

In six visits to Czechoslovakia, the Irish team has only played outside Prague on one occasion. That was in 1959 when a fixture, originally designed to launch the first European championship, was staged at Bratislava with the home team winning 40. Meanwhile, some of the most powerful administrators in Europe gathered for a press conference in Ghent on Saturday.

Ostensibly, the purpose of the session was to generate publicity for the Euro 2000 championship and to outline plans for the staging of the project which is being undertaken jointly by Holland and Belgium.

Instead, it deteriorated within minutes into a blatant electioneering exercise on behalf of UEFA's president, Lennart Johansson, the avuncular Swede who aspires to be the next president of FIFA.

Joao Havalenge's controversial reign is due to end this year and the ambitious men of football have until April 22nd to declare their candidature. Johansson, surrounded by the faithful, left nobody in any doubt that he aims to succeed him.

In an address which would have done justice to a high-profile politician, he listed "a fair distribution of power and money" as central to his manifesto. And he gave substance to the point by expressing the hope that FIFA will be in a position to distribute a minimum of £650,000 to each member federation over a four-year period.

In response to a carefully-framed question, he let it be known that he enjoys the friendship, if not the guaranteed support of Juan Antonio Samaranch, president of the International Olympic Committee and a powerful player in the politics of international sport.

All would be sweetness and light were it not for the intervention of another European, one Joseph Blatter, FIFA's flamboyant secretary general, who is no less ambitious and probably enjoys even more influential support than the other front-runner for the job.

Blatter is backed by Havelange who, presumably, can deliver the South American bloc without too much bother and, he hopes, the African vote, which could well prove decisive. That, one suspects, could distance FIFA still farther from its most powerful constituent body.

In the course of the press conference, several orchestrated voices queried the propriety of the current secretary general using his office for the next two-and-a-half months to support an individual candidate. All of which overlooked the fact that the merits of Johansson's candidature were thrust at a captive audience for more than an hour on Saturday, with the remainder of the agenda, including outline plans for Euro 2000 and details of the UEFA Against Landmines campaign, being telescoped into less than 30 minutes.

UEFA yesterday gave the thumbs up to Scottish fans visiting Bosnia. The British Foreign Office have issued strict guidelines warning people only to travel to Sarajevo if really necessary, but UEFA believe there should not be a problem for Scotland fans who wish to travel to watch their Euro 2000 qualifier.