Tottenham Hotspur’s projected €4 million signing of Mason Melia on a five-year contract from January 2026 will not restrict St Patrick’s Athletic’s use of the teenager this season.
Melia, however, will struggle to feature in the League of Ireland opener against Drogheda United on February 14th due to a back injury that denied him a cap for the Republic of Ireland under-21s last year.
“There’s no criteria or nothing [from Spurs],” confirmed Stephen Kenny, the St Pat’s manager. “We’ll just look forward to utilising Mason now. He’s only back training this week because he had a back issue, we had to give him a breather. We have to take our time with him and make sure he’s right.”
Due to Brexit, Melia cannot move to the UK until the transfer window following his 18th birthday in September.
St Pat’s owner Garrett Kelleher and Melia’s uncle, and agent, Clive Clarke received congratulations from across the Irish football landscape for securing a deal that sends the Wicklow native to the Premier League for an initial €1.9 million fee.
The contract includes financial add-ons, like appearances for Tottenham, Ireland caps, 20 per cent of his sell-on fee and a second sell-on fee in the future, that will take St Pat’s windfall up to €4 million.
“I am personally not hung up on the fee but I get the symbolism of that,” said Kenny about the deal that smashed the previous League of Ireland record of €600,000 paid by Celtic to Shamrock Rovers for Liam Scales in 2021.
[ Mason Melia smashes LOI transfer record to join Tottenham from St Pat’sOpens in new window ]
“It is important. You see Scandinavian clubs command really high fees for players. Getting the clauses in contracts can be difficult for clubs. Sometimes clubs are in a dilemma because the players have agents from a young age and maybe they won’t go or accept a clause.
“This shows there is another good way of doing it, like the Scandinavian clubs. Players come through the academy and they are developed when they go to England or further afield.
“Mason’s stock has kept rising. He is going to a club that have shown they really want him.”
The former Republic of Ireland manager was quick to note that Melia is an exceptional athlete who was able to compete with professionals at 15 years old. Kenny also admitted that club academies and the under-20 league in Ireland are not fit for purpose.
“Certainly, it is interesting because we are in our infancy since Brexit with our young players,” he said. “The players that came into the international team [when Kenny was Ireland manager], 90 per cent of them went to England at 16. That’s not possible any more, so how is the gap going to be filled? How are the players going to develop in that period?
“Mason is a unique player. The reason he was signed [by Spurs] was because he played against Istanbul Basaksehir [last August] and international centre halves, and [he] gave them a torrid night in Tallaght.”
The fact that Melia will play Uefa Conference League qualifiers for St Pat’s in July is believed to be a factor in Spurs not seeking to move him to a feeder club like Westerlo in Belgium.
“Not many squads in the Premier Division are going to have 16-year-olds in the first team,” Kenny added. “We’ve taken four players from our under-20s and sent them on loan to First Division clubs, at Bray, Wexford, Finn Harps and Dundalk.”
Speaking at the League of Ireland launch in the Mansion House, Kenny and Shelbourne manager Damien Duff found common ground over the glaring shortfall in developing Irish talent mainly because the FAI and its clubs lack the finances to create international class academies.
“Physically, Mason is a beast,” said Duff. “But at the same time, he has missed two or three years at an elite club, one of the biggest in the world, so there are pros and cons for everything. But if you call a spade a spade, he is playing catch-up.
“All I can speak of is my experience. I went to England at 16. Granted, it’s an awful long time ago, [but] I went and lived at the training ground, literally for two years until I was 18 and probably touched the football more than any kid in the world – training two or three times a day and at night time I was down at the astro playing.”
In contrast, Melia does a 100 kilometre round trip for training every day, driven by his mother Pamela from Newtownmountkennedy to Abbotstown.
“I lived it,” said Duff. “There was nothing in my way. Life is different now. Looking back at it now, would I have been happy going at 18? No, I was happy the way I did it and that’s it.”
Bohemians, meanwhile, have signed French striker Lys Mousset. The 28-year-old joined Sheffield United for £10 million in 2019 before his career petered out following stints in Italy, Germany and France.
Following a 13-month lay-off, Mousset is struggling for match fitness in advance of the Dublin derby against Shamrock Rovers at the Aviva Stadium on February 16th.
