If a week is a long time in politics, it is nothing compared to seven days in international football. Last weekend Fifa was resigning itself to another four years under the baton of Sepp Blatter after 133 countries out of 209 voted for the controversial 79-year-old at its annual congress in Zurich. A week later, Blatter has resigned from the position of Fifa president after extraordinary bribery allegations involving some of his leading officials; the Football Association of Ireland (FAI) finds itself at the centre of a squalid row over taking a €5 million payment in compensation for the failure to qualify for the 2010 World Cup finals and John Delaney, its chief executive, is once again embroilled in controversy.
The steady stream of revelations from the FBI investigation into Fifa’s activities over the past 12 years has uncovered a maze of payoffs and bribe allegations that have fractured the governing body for world football for the foreseeable future. The eye-watering figures involved, running into hundreds of millions of dollars, are principally linked with rights to stage world cups and highly prized TV deals.
Kickbacks, money laundering and death threats have become part of the football lexicon in the last week and the tsunami of detail looks set to continue as some of those involved hope that a deal can be cut with the US authorities.
The scale of the disclosures has led to demands from powerful associations in Europe for a revote on awarding the 2018 and 2022 World Cups to Russia and Qatar, and for a complete overhaul of the governing body for world football.
Those calls have been echoed most vociferously by the FAI chief who has demanded more transparency and better governance in the way Fifa conducts its business. The old maxim of “be careful what you wish for” has now come back to Delaney’s door. His obfuscation on the nature of the initial €5 million payment from Fifa, allied to critical questions over how the sizeable figure was dealt with in the association’s annual accounts, are of such a serious nature that only a complete explanation will go some way towards assuaging growing unease over the deal .
International reaction to the Fifa payment has been scathing and limiting the reputational damage may now be the best the FAI can hope for. Anything more will require the FAI chief executive to step aside and accept that the good of Irish football will be best served by his resignation.
His stewardship of one of Ireland's major sports bodies, which has been unconventional and occasionally embarrassing, has now rebounded on both himself and the association he claims to hold dear. As he claimed at the time of the controversial Thierry Henry goal that killed Irish hopes of qualifying for the 2010 World Cup finals, this is not about money, this is about sporting integrity.