Well it wouldn't be the incumbent's fault. But that does seem very inexperienced for a role like this.
The FAI finance director qualified as an accountant 4 years ago......
Well it wouldn't be the incumbent's fault. But that does seem very inexperienced for a role like this.
Does anyone know who is running our airtricity league fran Gavin is director but who is the league Chairman ? Haven’t heard from him ever ??
I never liked John Delaney.
I've a demonstrable track record in that regard.
He saddled Irish football with intergenerational debt on a national stadium it'll never own.
His oversight of the LoI has been ruinous -and that's from a low starting point.
He bought junior and schoolboy football with astroturf they deserved anyway. He made gifts and favours that had more strings attached than the cast of Thunderbirds out of provision that was supposed to be his core work and for which he was ridiculously well paid.
Anytime he spoke I just wanted to grab him by the ears and bounce his skull on a kerb till the hollow sound stopped.
But now -just once more for old time' sake I'd love to hear him say "When I took over as CEO of the FAI..." just to see how he'd finish that sentence today.
" I wish to God that someone would be able to block out the voices in my head for five minutes, the voices that scream, over and over again: "Why do they come to me to die?"
Jeez i knew it would be bad but its way worse than most of us thought. The FAI needs to be folded up at this point, as a brand its Fcuked IMO and only a completely new and transparent structure has a much better chance of putting Irish football back to a place where people are proud to be associated with it. At this stage LOI teams looking into joining the NIFL does not seem so far fetched. Sad day. Presentation ah help us and the president not knowing, Chemical Ali stuff.
I suppose it can all be traced back to the decision not to sell the Premium section packages (Vantage Club, whatever its name as) to ISG a decade ago for 75 million, which was one million than they'd invested in the stadium..
I think that's when the FAI's problems started maybe - but there's no linear path between that mess and double contracts, huge personal spending, and tax irregularities.
This is scarily incompetent governance - not just from Delaney, but from every person who was on that board, and others beside.
Out for a spell, got neglected, lay on the bench unselected.
It depends on how dirty his hands are. It's probably unlikely, but it's hard to think of a comparable case. Anglo was bigger of course, and no-one went to jail, but they were bankers, so that's different. But if the 2.7m Revenue settlement is his doing, and if he was signing contracts to himself (the Board deny any knowledge), and if was effectively embezzling funds, then you never know.
But your post raises another question - what does happen if the FAI goes bust?
Do Irish teams lose all coefficient points for example? So preliminary round of Europe, bottom seed in World Cup/Euro qualifying, League D in the Nations League?
Are we likely to lose a LoI club over this - are clubs owed UEFA Solidarity funding for example? Prize money is nil as it stands of course, but is there any sort of other support provided to the LoI which could be pulled?
I don't know where the end game in all this is.
Interesting questions. I think a UEFA member association going bust is unprecedented so far. Maybe UEFA have rules in place for that, or maybe not.
I would think the clubs shouldn't lose coefficient points, as it's not their fault. Demotion of the national team (bottom seeds, league D) sounds more plausible to me. Even though it's not the national team's fault either. But UEFA could say the national team represents the FAI.
As for prize money: Have the clubs received all monies from this summer's Champions League and Europa League qualifying campaigns yet, or are they still waiting to be paid (they are paid through the FAI, aren't they)? Considering how fragile LoI club finances often are, I'd say it is likely that some clubs might get in trouble as a result of all this.
FIFA would be first to take action against the FAI, and UEFA would fall into line. However, it is extremely unlikely that in the short term anything would happen on terms of Ireland being put out of football. In my opinion, if the FAI went bankrupt the process of out working such would allow a window for FIFA to step in, put people and steps in place to ensure football on an International level continues and UEFA to do similar to assist those clubs and turn league involved in their competitions. The biggest worry in terms of football would be at the grassroots and similar levels. That would probably need government intervention to support over the short term, while a new body is put in place.
Wow, bankruptcy is possibly the easy answer. Might a bank come in and gain kudos by offering very sympathetic terms over a long period of time? The FAI needs good, trustworthy and competent people at the helm for the next ten years or so to sort this out and regain everyone's trust.
Last edited by gastric; 06/12/2019 at 9:42 PM.
Not unless kudos are some new currency I've not heard of.
The other issue is what is the FAI's sustainability at present? Obviously the E9m (!!) in losses are a one-off. But can it make a profit this year? (Hardly, if government funding is stopped and internal reports are going) Next year? If its core function is loss-making (extra bank interest won't help), then the issue gets more serious. And that's before you consider that the profit has to exceed the debt being repaid annually for it to remain solvent
Let the company go bankrupt. Let delaney go after his money in the counts.
Set up Football Ireland.
Apply to Fifa to become a member as Ireland(the name of the country), not the republic of Ireland nonsense that came out of the dispute with two FAs.
France dont play International sport of the The French republic. We compete in every other Sport as Ireland.
**** the Euros. Hopefully the north go through the play offs and play games in the Aviva.
And Kenny can come straight in now with the playoffs done.
Is Delaney still owed money? Or have they paid him all? It's pretty bad alright.
interesting quote here:
"Any person who is a serving member of Council and who has been a member of Council for two years, which service need not have been consecutive, shall be eligible to be elected as President of the FAI."
https://www.fai.ie/domestic/news/don...ent-of-the-fai
Was also interesting that Jamie Finn and Niamh Reid Burke were quoted with this: "On behalf of the Ireland players, we thank Sport Ireland for their support and look forward to doing the country proud in the remaining Euro 2021 qualifiers." If I was part of the FAI as it currently stands, I wouldn't be particularly happy about it.
Can't see this working itself out over the next few months. The FAI are too stubborn to give an inch more than they have to Sport Ireland and Sport Ireland are doing as much as they can to destroy the FAI, so it just gets worse and worse and worse. The FAI was and is a hugely flawed organisation (with some people doing very good work, the current crop of young players are, in my opinion, at least to a certain extent, fruit of that labour). But Sport Ireland are incredibly flawed beast in themselves - and in truth, one that probably doesn't value football anywhere near as highly as it should. I would view every decision that they or the minister makes with just as much scepticism as I would the FAI - and the idea that they are the panacea for all our problems is naive.
Meanwhile, if you subjected other organisations like the IRFU to the same scrutiny as the FAI, you'd find a lot going on there too.
Anyway, the FAI will continue to shoot themselves in the foot, then the knees as the months go on - and Sport Ireland will do their best to encourage the bleeding and it'll rumble on probably for another 15 months with redundancies, strikes before eventually the FAI will fold, or FIFA will accuse Sport Ireland of governmental interference or some dire sequence of events will happen and it will all hinder the good work that Stephen Kenny and other coaches are doing.
What's happened here is that Delaney has single-handedly bankrupted the FAI by (a) giving himself multiple contracts and (b) putting around 25k/month of personal spending through the books for at least three years.
That's criminal behaviour of an almost unseen scale in corporate Ireland so far as I'm aware. The board are culpable in demonstrating a complete lack of oversight. That prat from schools football at the press conference yesterday who squirmed when asked what he'd challenged Delaney on in his time on the board is a great example of the self-important incompetents who've been running the FAI. ("I believe in democracy", he said while completely ignoring the fact that he wasn't remotely capable of doing the job he'd been elected to)
I don't see any reason to suggest anything remotely similar is happening at the IRFU or GAA, and I don't see the need to suggest it.
I'm struggling to find any examples of a national football association becoming bankrupt and having to be reconstituted, in terms of consequences to national teams and clubs. FAI's position may be literally unprecedented.
Author of Never Felt Better (History, Film Reviews).
Dan McDonnell has finally been let loose in the Indo and vitually stabbed the vampire Delaney with a wooden stake to the heart. Not that the litany of corruption is particularily new but kudos to Dan for the eloquent expresssion.
Trying to use language carefully here. A friend/acquaintance of mine got a massive, massive payout to leave the IRFU. Trying to stay vague but it had to do with differences of opinion as to how to handle what would later become a very well publicised legal matter. But the payout and all the circumstances surrounding it were swept under the rug - and it's certainly my belief that if it were the FAI in the same situation, it would have been front page of a load of newspapers...
There have been a number of examples recently regarding the GAA, the situation with the unnamed official and also the issues in galway and mayo. Obviously the IOC stuff that broke in 2016 showed the culture there. The FAI could well be the worst, but everything i've seen or heard suggests that everyone has their snouts in the troff...
https://www.irishexaminer.com/breaki...es-892962.html
https://www.irishtimes.com/sport/gae...unds-1.4068651
https://www.rte.ie/sport/gaa/2019/10...-gaa-official/
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