{"id":17966,"date":"2025-09-13T03:21:13","date_gmt":"2025-09-13T03:21:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/17966\/"},"modified":"2025-09-13T03:21:13","modified_gmt":"2025-09-13T03:21:13","slug":"fai-chiefs-cool-demeanour-was-at-odds-with-an-organisation-groaning-under-the-strain-of-debt-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/17966\/","title":{"rendered":"FAI chief\u2019s cool demeanour was at odds with an organisation groaning under the strain of debt \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cIt\u2019s an interrogation room here,\u201d laughed David Courell<\/a>, as the various football correspondents filed into a room in Abbotstown on Friday. One of Courell\u2019s promises when he took over as the FAI<\/a>\u2019s latest chief executive was to regularise his office\u2019s media engagements and so, this is one of what may or may not become a series of sit-downs. As ever, taking anything as given when it comes to the FAI is a fool\u2019s game.<\/p>\n

For now, at least, Courell deserves some credit. Previous administrations were more inclined to wear as a badge of honour the fact that we only ever got to see them answer questions when things got so bad that they had to get dickied up to sit in front of an Oireachtas<\/a> Committee. Never mind the media, they wouldn\u2019t even allow questions at their own AGM half the time.<\/p>\n

Courell has a trip to Kildare Street in his future too, the week after next. It\u2019s not hard to imagine his forebears in the role putting this kind of engagement off until afterwards. Or, more likely, guffawing with contempt at the idea of doing it at all. So, although it might sound like a small mercy to submit himself to sitting in a chair and taking an hour of questions, it\u2019s not nothing.<\/p>\n

As for the substance of what he actually said, that\u2019s another matter. Courell is a polished executive, fluent in the jargon-heavy lingo that passes for corporate communication. When it comes to the sort of deflective bromides that allow someone to filibuster their way through a long Q&A session, he would qualify as a native speaker. It may well have been a factor in him getting the job. It certainly can\u2019t have hurt.<\/p>\n

\"DavidDavid Courell would not answer questions about former Ireland women’s team manager Eileen Gleeson, who has taken a case against the FAI. Photograph: Ryan Byrne\/Inpho <\/p>\n

And so he was able to evade at least some of the stickier questions that came his way. Predictably enough, he slid neatly in behind the shield of legal advice when the subject of Eileen Gleeson<\/a>\u2019s legal case came up. Indeed, he gave notice to the Oireachtas Committee that there will be limitations in what he\u2019ll be able to say when he does sit down for his grilling. <\/p>\n

As an example, he was asked at one stage about the allegation in the Sunday Independent that the women\u2019s team couldn\u2019t have access to an analyst for a competitive match because he was needed for the men\u2019s team for a friendly. \u201cAt this stage we\u2019re at risk of going into some of the really specific elements,\u201d Courell said. \u201cSo while I would happily want to answer these questions, I\u2019m afraid it\u2019s one of those situations I\u2019m going to have to decline.\u201d<\/p>\n

Throughout the hour, Courell\u2019s tone never really changed. He spoke evenly and reasonably, like a teacher giving maths grinds to a student whose parents are listening in from the next room. He doesn\u2019t lose his cool, he doesn\u2019t get annoyed. If you played the tape to someone who knew nothing about Irish football, you\u2019d come away thinking things were more or less fine. A few speedbumps and disagreements here and there but nothing too drastic.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Eileen Gleeson v FAI: what it\u2019s about and why the repercussions could be hugeOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

And yet we all know the dire truth. We all know that the FAI is groaning under the weight of enormous debt, that the men\u2019s national team is a shambles, that the system for developing young footballers is chronically under-funded and under-developed. We know that there are legal cases on the horizon concerning the historical behaviour of coaches of the women\u2019s national team and that the last women\u2019s manager is in the process of taking her own legal action. <\/p>\n

We know, too, that Courell is in the job because the last guy departed after having to explain himself in front of politicians for getting cash in lieu of holidays<\/a>. We know that the whole organisation is being shaken up, with staff deeply unsettled<\/a> at the prospect of redundancies and nobody giving them clarity as to how many there might be. We know that the whole country sees the FAI as a byword for chaos, failure and incompetence.<\/p>\n

\"FAIFAI chief executive David Courell with Taoiseach Miche\u00e1l Martin during Ireland’s Nations League match against Bulgaria at the Aviva Stadium in March. Photograph: Ryan Byrne\/Inpho <\/p>\n

Worst of all, we know that even if by some miracle Courell was able to solve every last one of these problems, it would only bring the FAI back to the lowest acceptable baseline of what a country\u2019s football association should be about. Do it all and he will only succeed in getting the FAI to the start of the actual job. <\/p>\n

Whether or not he is up to it won\u2019t be clear for a long time and nothing he could have said in an hour-long Q&A was ever going to change that. For now, he comes across as a steady professional and someone commendably uninterested in being anything other than a boring official in a suit. <\/p>\n

When it comes to the FAI, that should not be taken as an insult.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cIt\u2019s an interrogation room here,\u201d laughed David Courell, as the various football correspondents filed into a room in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17967,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[16335,16336,13446,4700,61,60,112],"class_list":{"0":"post-17966","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-david-courell","9":"tag-eileen-gleeson","10":"tag-football-association-of-ireland-fai","11":"tag-heimir-hallgrimsson","12":"tag-ie","13":"tag-ireland","14":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17966","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17966"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17966\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}