Are the FAI really that bad?

[AustinoAsprilla]

Serious question. Are the FAI really that bad when compared to other FA's around? I know as an organisation they are looked upon as being a joke but is it just that all FA's are unable to please the public when it comes to running football?

The English FA have just given their fans one of the greatest stadiums in the world, run one of the best leagues in the world and have never been afraid to pump money into grassroots yet they get slated for stadium delays, McClaren, not producing enough homegrown talent, too many foreigners etc.

Dutch FA have probably greatest grassroots in the world yet their FA get really bad press due to their best players all leaving and national team always failing.

Brazilian FA can't hold onto any kid who shows potential and can't play many friendly at home because none of their players would turn up.

Italian FA - where do I start. Scottish FA - 2 teams won national league in about 100 years. Spanish FA - constantly underachieving, no national stadium.

So are the FAI really that bad compared to these or is it just FA's in general?


PS- I'll excuse the German FA... They seem "extremely efficient"!!

[Stuttgart88]

I'm no expert (ask Owls Fan - he has opinions on this matter) but it seems to be they make a decent fist of the grass roots and have well thought out and ambitious plans regarding developing young players.

Their management of the international set up has to be questioned. The Staunton appointment, media relations, failure to capitalise on a golden era of success at underage level, failure to develop facilities e.g., eircom park, are all obvious failings.

Appalling corporate governance / organisation.

[OwlsFan]

Well if you judge by the comparable yardstick, the IFA, there's not much in it.

There is no doubt that there has been mismanagement and bad decisions made but then show me any organisation that doesn't make mistakes.

Soccer has always played second fiddle (no pun intended) to the GAA in this country for historical reasons. If the GAA didn't exist I firmly believe we would have a viable soccer league comparable to say Scotland (with Cork vs Dublin being our Celtic vs Rangers) but like soccer in Wales, where rugby is the No. 1 sport, it is hard to compete as the No. 2 sport in a small country. Remember people were banned from playing soccer if they played GAA.

There was no money in soccer where it was a working class game played and supported by primarily in working class areas. Rugby had money even though it too was a minority sport for reasons I don't need to go in to.

The FAI is now, compared to many years ago, a professionally run organisation, primarily because it can now afford to be because of gate receipts and sponsorship acquired from home international games.

Things are now run relatively efficiently and I wouldn't put too much negative emphasis on poor choice of managers. The English FA up to recently lead the way on that and many professionally run clubs hire and fire managers with great regularity.

Things could be better but they are far better than they used to be when we used play our home games at Dalymount and the best view was under the shed with a thousand sitting on top of it (not having paid in but climbing up the back).

[pineapple stu]

The FAI is now, compared to many years ago, a professionally run organisation

Things are now run relatively efficiently

How would you back up these statements?

[jbyrne]

have to agree that things are better than they were. sure the fai get a fair bit of bad press but the media in this country always concentrate on the negative rather than the positive.

my memory is that things were so bad that they were almost bankrupt in the mid 80s and it was only the opel sponsorship that let them take on Charlton as manager. I seem to remember them trying to organise a raffle around 1987 to pay for the re-fit of their HQ but had to abandon it due to a lack of interest. If anyone has the Ireland v Belgium 1987 match programme I think there is something in it about the raffle listing what items they needed to purchase for the office. does anyone else remember this?

[GavinZac]

Spanish FA - constantly underachieving, no national stadium.

Spain is a collection of autonomous states. To select a national stadium, presumably in madrid, would cause a lot of hassle.

We, on the other hand, didnt bother our arses keeping dalymount in good nick.

[lopez]

Spain is a collection of autonomous states. To select a national stadium, presumably in madrid, would cause a lot of hassle.

We, on the other hand, didnt bother our arses keeping dalymount in good nick.

Spain's problems are not with the national stadium issue, with a number of class grounds around the place. Truth is there is a latent antipathy with 'la seleccion' that exists throughout the country. Hence only 65K at the Bernabeu for the crunch game with Sweden (I would have thought 15K of those would be Swedes though not sure).

The FA seems to be well run there, but it still has accusations of political issues and 'padrinismo' (not what you know,, but who you know), especially with the president Angel Villar getting his fellow Basques in some cushy numbers (the bloke before Aracojones, Inaki Saenz (was that his name?) being the worst example).

I think we all could have known Stan was not up to the job. Shame as the FAI has improved in recent years.

[stojkovic]

The Spanish FA do not need a national stadium as their clubs have ones that are sufficient. Similarly the German, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch and French FA's do not own their own stadiums as they are owned by the clubs or local councils.

Wembley was privatly owned for 80 years before the FA took it over and rebuilt it.

Therefore the FAI cannot be criticised for not having a stadium as we will be one of the few who will own (part own) their own when Lansdowne is rebuilt.

The issue is the sh1t state of our club grounds and/or the lack of investment from local councils. If the GAA did not exist in this country then this problem would not exist.

[Superhoops]

How would you back up these statements?

There is certainly more resource being put in at all levels of the game but especially at grass roots level.

The game is better promoted nationally now than ever and there are more participants than ever, more people now play soccer than any other game in Ireland.

There are more opportunities, whether it be for players, coaching or refereeing. Look at the underage set-up, not only are there more games and more players at representative level but they are being drawn from all over Ireland, not just the Dublin and Cork area. Also, there are now structures in place to support young players who have not made in the UK and to encourage them to continue playing and add value to the EL.

The FAI's commercial accumen has definitely improved and significant revenue is being generated from television, sponsorship and the corporate sector, all of which is necessary to sustain the financial viability of the activites they undertake. They have successfully lobbied for more Government funding of soccer which has increased massively over the last 3/4 years.

As has been pointed out before, in any big organisation every decision made is not always right every time but mature organisations move on and learn. Decision making and organisation matters are more business like since the implementation of the Genesis recommendation for a Board of Management which reports to the full FAI Council.

One area the FAI could improve on is how they interact with fans, be they EL fans, junior league fans or senior international fans both in Ireland and abroad.

All is not perfect but in my opinion the game generally is better run now than ever and some credit should be given where it is due. I would like to see more emphasis in the media on the success stories rather than the constant criticism and sniping that goes on but of course good news doesn't generally sell newspapers.

[OwlsFan]

Well the English FA reviewed candidates and appointed a quality world class manager in a month.

The FAI have been playing hot potato with the responsibility for appointing a new manager for TWO months.

Not so difficult when the best possible available manager applies for the job and you have 6 million to give him.

They didn't take long to appoint McLaren either.

[tetsujin1979]

Not so difficult when the best possible available manager applies for the job and you have 6 million to give him.

They didn't take long to appoint McLaren either.

They only appointed McLaren after Scolari had first accepted the job, then realised what sort of press scrutiny he would be under, and finally told the FA to keep it and signed a new contract with Portugal. Barwick then had the bare-faced cheek to tell everyone that McLaren was the number one choice from the beginning!

[blobbyblob]

From one who is actively involved both in grassroots and club development, I must say that the FAI and the SFAI have been a great support and pulled out all the stops to ensure that we have all the resources available to us that we need.

There is definitely a structure and a vision in place now and they seem to know where they want to be. I think were in safe hands for the future.

As an organisation, the FAI is much bigger than just the international team and as far as Im concerned if they can crack the grassroots side of things we will have many good years ahead of us even if things arent so pretty now. Sadly the people with little involvement with grassroot or even junior club level have little appreciation for that.

[barney]

Well the English FA reviewed candidates and appointed a quality world class manager in a month.

The FAI have been playing hot potato with the responsibility for appointing a new manager for TWO months.

Not really fair to compare with the English FA. They're bigger and have more money. What about Scotland? They got Walter Smith whose record at the time was not exactly glittering (Rangers aside). Then they got McLeish who had just seen his career nosedive.

Wales have gotten Toshack!! Before that it was a managerial rookie in Hughes.

Northern Ireland got Lawrie Sanchez, who didn't exactly set the world alight beforehand (or since) and then Nigel Worthington, who had been sacked by Norwich.

The Irish job is not an attractive one for any manager. The pay is realtively poor (compared to the English job or a Premiership job) and the chances of success, even relative success, don't look great on paper.

Also, why is there a rush to get a manager? No point in deciding on someone prematurely, we can take our time.

As for the FAI, I think they're doing a decent job but are in a position to be shot at. My only concern is the petty fines that they hand out.

[OwlsFan]

My God, I was expecting this thread to turn in to the usual string of invectives but most are positive comments

Is that Santa's sleigh out there being pulled through the sky by a horde of flying pigs??

[gspain]

The last ESRI study showed that football is the most popular sport in the country from a participation level - 13% v 8% for GAA. Schoolboy football and amateur football etc are all thriving. Unfortunately despite football being the biggest sport in the country by a long long way this does not translate into support for our domestic league. For some strange reason rugby supporters in Dublin seem to support Leinster rather than Glasgow or Sale. Those in Limerick seem to support Munster rather than Wasps or Leicester.

I think the FAI are doing a good job of running football in this country outside of the Eircom League. Progress is being made there but there is a lot to be done.

It appears that the FAI are totally screwing up the selection of a manager for our national team. I am loathe to comment until I see who we end up with but frankly I'd love to stop the process and just take the runner up for the Scotland job. He is likely to be streets ahead of whoever we pick.

[pineapple stu]

There is certainly more resource being put in at all levels of the game but especially at grass roots level.

The game is better promoted nationally now than ever and there are more participants than ever, more people now play soccer than any other game in Ireland.

There are more opportunities, whether it be for players, coaching or refereeing. Look at the underage set-up, not only are there more games and more players at representative level but they are being drawn from all over Ireland, not just the Dublin and Cork area. Also, there are now structures in place to support young players who have not made in the UK and to encourage them to continue playing and add value to the EL.

The FAI's commercial accumen has definitely improved and significant revenue is being generated from television, sponsorship and the corporate sector, all of which is necessary to sustain the financial viability of the activites they undertake. They have successfully lobbied for more Government funding of soccer which has increased massively over the last 3/4 years.

As has been pointed out before, in any big organisation every decision made is not always right every time but mature organisations move on and learn. Decision making and organisation matters are more business like since the implementation of the Genesis recommendation for a Board of Management which reports to the full FAI Council.

One area the FAI could improve on is how they interact with fans, be they EL fans, junior league fans or senior international fans both in Ireland and abroad.

All is not perfect but in my opinion the game generally is better run now than ever and some credit should be given where it is due. I would like to see more emphasis in the media on the success stories rather than the constant criticism and sniping that goes on but of course good news doesn't generally sell newspapers.

See, the problem I have with this is that it reads like a string of sound-bytes - all very impressive, but again, backed up by nothing tangible.

The bit highlighted in bold particularly undermines your post. Have you seen the Genesis Report? If you say you have, you're either -

(a) a senior FAI official, in which case, get back to work.
(b) an international player, in which case you're a liar or
(c) a liar, because no-one outside of that group has seen the report. Even Noel Mooney couldn't get a hand on a copy when he went looking recently.

Moving on from that, how do you know the report was implemented? Was the report good or bad? The report into the league was god-awful tripe, and the one into the rugby team doesn't appear the most earth shattering either; it's quite possible the report into the FAI was of a similar standard. In which case, it doesn't necessarily follow that it's a good thing the report's recommendations were implemented, even if they were.

Such gaping holes in your post leave me inclined to wonder about the rest of it.

[Bald Student]

the one into the rugby team doesn't appear the most earth shattering either;

Pot, kettle and another secret report.

[John83]

(c) a liar, because no-one outside of that group has seen the report. Even Noel Mooney couldn't get a hand on a copy when he went looking recently.

So Eoghan Rice says. Not the same thing at all.

If anyone has a copy by the way, please pm me.

[John83]

Pot, kettle and another secret report.

At least they admit that it's being kept private. The FAI just claim to have lost all their copies.

[onceahoop]

I think the FAI are doing a good job of running football in this country outside of the Eircom League. Progress is being made there but there is a lot to be done.

It appears that the FAI are totally screwing up the selection of a manager for our national team. I am loathe to comment until I see who we end up with but frankly I'd love to stop the process and just take the runner up for the Scotland job. He is likely to be streets ahead of whoever we pick.

If there doing such a good job, why are the schoolboy associations, the shoolgirl associations, the junior associations, many EL clubs and many fans disilluioned. We can't all be wrong. The common denominator in all this angst is the Chief Executive, the man who hid behind every pillar in South Africa every time he saw Gerard Houllier ( a bit like Bertie up every tree in North County Dublin looking for evidence against Ray Burke), unbelieveable. John Delaney is the elephant in the room that most members of the FAI are afraid to stand up against becuse he's surrounded himself with lackeys to do his bidding. Whatever good has been done counts for nothing if the house comes tumbling down.