Red Star Belgrade

[langpark]

22 hours ago, nadera78 said:

Elite 1 is village competition. It's role is to sustain clubs that produce junior players who go on to play for Catalans and Toulouse and it will never be any more than that. I have no idea why anyone thinks it can be bumped up beyond this, because there is absolutely no evidence for it over the past 30 years. The best thing we could do is take the biggest clubs out of it and give them a bigger and better competition to play in.

Until now, yes I agree, it has been a village competition.  But, who is to say it will "never" be more than that?  If Red Star can dare to dream of something bigger (and take significant strides towards that over the years) then why can we not hope/expect for the likes of Lyon, Montpellier, Bordeaux, Avignon, Toulon, to one day step up as well?  The fact there is already a RL presence in those major cities (albeit a small one) means that there is some foundation in place already and that can be built upon. 

Also interesting to not, in a recent interview, Nigel Wood said the IRL has a clear goal to reach the point where we have 8 'top' nations at international level.  So that in the quarter-final of a World Cup, in theory, any of those 8 could have a realistic chance of winning.  He said there two G7 nations that they would like to target are USA and France.  What exactly they will do in this plan to 'target' them and strengthen them, I don't know, he didn't elaborate, but perhaps they have something big planned for them.