FAI HAVE GONE FROM ABSENTEE CEO TO AN ABSENTEE MANAGER
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don’t believe any ing body in Europe p with this. and more clear that sick, broken organialso one that wants ment to give it vast payers’ money.
I wouldn’t give the FAI a cent until we know, for certain, that it’s a body we can trust.
In my opinion, we’re a long way from that point.
Irish football has been one of the great passions of my life and I’m in despair at its current state. We are falling miles behind the rest of Europe.
There are only 10 full time coaches working in academies in Ireland — Poland have 376,
Portugal have 315. We don’t have either the infrastructure of the paid full time coaches.
We need at least 30 times as many coaches, we need proper, state of the art academies.
But that requires money, and it’s hard to blame the government if they look at the sick, broken FAI and decide not to give them a cent.
There is talk of Sarah Keane taking over as CEO and she is hugely impressive. She took over two organisations — in swimming and the Irish Olympic movement — that were seen as toxic and turned them around.
Challenge
But turning the FAI into a body that we can all trust and get behind would be a massive challenge, even for a woman of her substance and ability.
If I was Minister for Sport and the FAI came looking to me for money, I’d tell them I had one question — where was Hallgrímsson last weekend?
No matter how impressive their Powerpoint presentation, no matter how much corporate jargon they used, that goes to the core of the current FAI.
Eventually the penny dropped that having an absentee CEO was a bad look. Now they’ve landed us with an absentee manager. It’s a joke, but nobody’s laughing.