"The world has changed" and FAI chairman Roy Barrett is keen to remind everyone, especially a prospective shirt sponsor, that one man is no longer running Irish football from their Abbotstown enclave.
It was Barrett, the former Goodbody managing director, who stated the obvious about the pandemic reshaping the way people live and commute, while dismissing a growing din around Jonathan Hill fulfilling the role of chief executive from London or via planes, trains and automobiles.
The world has also changed when it comes to how the FAI makes key decisions. Barrett and Hill refused to reveal how much the association will spend in bidding to host Euro 2028, alongside the four neighbouring FAs, but the unflinching message of Tuesday's media briefing was that 2022 signifies a new era for Irish football.
"We have moved away from the scenario where one individual can take all the decisions in relation to the running of this football association," said Hill, with a clear reference to his predecessor John Delaney. "We all saw what happened when we allowed that to happen. I am fully comfortable in having good people on my senior leadership team who are empowered to take decisions in their own areas of expertise."
Now it is just a matter of filling the vacant spots on said leadership team.
Again, it was Barrett who attempted to sever ties with how Merrion Square used to operate when a veteran journalist suggested that the FAI’s historical untrustworthiness was based on financial secrecy breeding suspicion.
“That may well have been the way it was for 30 years,” Barrett replied. “The counter to that is that we’ve put in a huge amount of change, around the governance, running, and operations of the organisation.
“There’s a massive amount of oversight on all aspects of performance and every item of significant expenditure, all of which is fed through to the board, nothing to do with politics of past or the future. We take a clearly objective view, where we earn our money, where we spend it and what’s appropriate now and in the future.
“All I can do is, give you assurance, we’re not lacking transparency, we have a very transparent operation around the board and I’m entirely satisfied that the amount of money that we’re putting into the Euro 2028 bid is not meaningful in the overall scheme of things. And it has substantial, potential benefits.”
Under a million Euro?
“I am not going to give figures.”
Meaty information
This long form answers session, which ran to an hour, had the business savvy executives chewing up straight questions with intelligent responses largely devoid of the meaty information on strategy that everyone in Irish football craves.
“As a board, we’ve tried to reform the organisation as much as we can so that it’s investable and people can trust in it and I think we’ve got to that point,” said Barrett.
“We need to stop looking back at the past and making excuses for it. I don’t want to be sitting here in a year’s time (saying) ‘well actually we have a trust issue because of what happened two years ago.’ That now stops.”
Maybe so, but the FAI’s search for an alarming number of senior staff continues.
A hands-on coach to replace Anthony Barry, after the Liverpudlian was head-hunted by Belgium, could be unearthed before Belgium come to Dublin for the FAI's centenary fixture on March 26th. Stephen Kenny's new contract, Hill believes, will also be signed by then.
The FAI has an equally pressing need to find a director of football, who either rips up the Ruud Dokter doctrine or sees it through. Alongside the recruitment of commercial, marketing and communications expertise, an international football operations manager must also be hired.
And, of course, the men’s team needs a shirt sponsor.
“Yes, we wish we had a sponsor on a multi-year arrangement on terms that were greater than with Three,” Barrett continued. “That’s what we would hope for but you’ve got to understand where we’ve come from as an organisation is a bad place.
“Where the reputation of the organisation, and the brand, were materially impacted for all sorts of obvious reasons so where we’ve focused over the last couple of years, both as a board and an executive in all the things that we’ve done, is to acknowledge the facts and say ‘OK, that’s what it is, we now need to improve trust in the organisation and trust in the brand. And make people, be they government, sponsors or whomever, comfortable and confident to invest in the FAI or the FAI’s teams’.
“We’re a brilliant sport with a massive following and we’ve got the largest number of people who participate in the game and want to believe in its future. For any commercial sponsor, that is really attractive.
“We have to make it comfortable for them to invest, so they actually trust it, and I hope now they can.”
