We are still left with tab for time of rotten excess
TRUST me, was one of John Delaney’s catchphrases. For too long, too many did and Irish football continues to pay a crippling price for his wretched time at the top.
At last, the truth of his ruinous reign has been rigorously and painstakingly exposed in Champagne Football, the book in which journalists Mark Tighe and Paul Rowan chart the rise, the crowning and damning fall of the former FAI chief executive.
The cover of the book refers to ‘the betrayal of Irish football’ and what follows gives grisly details of that sell-out where the only person who mattered in Delaney’s much-vaunted football family was himself, The Godfather.
Anyone who stood in the way of ‘Teflon John’ or dared ask questions were removed, while those who made him look better were used as piggy-backs, including good football men like John Giles.
A few decent folk cried enough and walked away, but others stayed inside, propped up by free trips and tickets, while Delaney lorded over a 15-year fiefdom of self-indulgence and excess.
Just as Bernstein and Woodward’s digging and diligence did for Richard ‘Tricky Dicky’ Nixon and led to their best-seller, All
The President’s Men, so Tighe and Rowan peel back the lucre-laden layers of Delaney’s grubbiness and iron-fisted rule.
There’s probably a movie in this one too. Delaney would probably ask to play himself.
Delaney was a polished act in front of the cameras but it was his final show where he fluffed his lines — in the chambers of Dáil Eireann, playing dumb on legal advice. After stonewalling an Oireachtas hearing in April 2019, by refusing to answer any questions, an unnamed sport official is quoted: ‘John Delaney walked into that committee meeting still in control of the FAI. He came out a dead man walking.’
FIANNA Fáil TD, Kevin O’Keeffe, felt Delaney had been unfairly portrayed as the ‘Trump of the FAI’. To many, Delaney is every bit as narcissistic as the White House incumbent.
That Oireachtas hearing took place a month after the revelations in the Sunday Times about an unexplained loan of €100,000 from Delaney to the FAI.
From the moment the story broke, Delaney, usually so surefooted, lost control and, ultimately, his job.
It helped Tighe and Rowan that they had their own Deep Throat, a source with direct access to Delaney’s excessive expenditure and perks.
It’s unclear if the source was responsible for leaving an envelope on Tighe’s desk on March 1, 2019, inside of which was a photocopy of the €100,000 cheque and an FAI remittance.
But after the story appeared in spite desperately attempts to block its publication, anyone with inside information on Delaney would have been convinced the newspaper was up for the fight.
‘There’s no story here’, Tighe was told by the FAI, yet there was. And a bloody big one, too, because the FAI were stoney broke on Delaney’s watch, with debts of more than €50million, and had been desperate for Delaney’s 100,000 loan to ease cash flow issues.
The FAI source trusted the Sunday Times duo, who played their hand by the book. Everything presented to them, they asked the FAI to comment.
The details of Delaney’s luxury life were revealed, the €3,000-amonth rent, the credit card spend, the swanky hotels in New York and Dubai, the duty-free expenditure, the countless cash withdrawals. Between 2015 and 2018, €164,000 was spent on airports and travel companies in that period, ‘costs that appeared to be for the personal benefit of Delaney’, state the authors.
Placed on gardening leave in April of last year, over €5,000 was withdrawn on Delaney’s FAI credit card after August for ‘non business-related’ matters.
How did someone paid as much as €431,000 a year in May 2010 need such ready cash?
Some loose ends are still not explained, like the FAI payments of €95,000 to Delaney’s former girlfriend Suzanne Keegan, who accompanied him to the Euro 2012 finals.
All along, Delaney did as he wished, and was answerable to nobody, his ego inflating like a pumped football. He was the subject of an embarrassing documentary, John The Baptist, where Denis O’Brien assured us that Delaney could run FIFA ‘more honestly’ than Sepp Blatter.
DELANEY appeared in ‘Strictly Come Dancing’ with Nadia Forde to whom he said he was ‘a father figure’.
He sang IRA songs in pubs, threw his tie into the Irish fans after games, was carried shoeless across Sopot square and spoke on radio about his celebrity life and how he should have asked for more than €5m from Blatter for the Thierry Henry handball.
He got FAI staff to arrange his 50th birthday at Mount Juliet that cost €80,000 and where the theme of the night was James Bond.
It was October 2017, and the
FAI’s finances were shaken but special agent 007 Delaney wasn’t at all stirred.
He oversaw the ins and outs of Irish managers, and came up with the bizarre Mick McCarthyStephen Kenny succession stakes, although his plan was for Robbie Keane to follow McCarthy. Delaney was like Icarus, he flew too close to the sun and got burnt.
Even when his time was up, and a severance package was agreed, the great manipulator reached for his crumpled trumpet.
He would pen his own farewell, he said, citing his great achievements in Irish football and how he served the ‘football family’. Finally, the FAI board stood firm.
‘Champagne Football’ follows a champagne lifestyle — one that has left Irish football picking up the tab.