VIP lifestyle of the FAI boss who just loves to sing
John Delaney mingles with models in the Aviva suite, then f lies out to Marbella for dinner with friends
JOHN DELANEY’S controversial sing-song came in a week in which he went from entertaining models at the Aviva Stadium to dining in Marbella with international fraudster Kaste Dahl and his fiancée Virginia Macari.
His antics provide fresh insight into the party lifestyle of the €360,000-a-year FAI chief.
A video surfaced last weekend of Delaney singing The Ballad of Joe McDonnell in popular rugby haunt the Bath in Dublin 4. The FAI chief was criticised for singing the Republican anthem, which tells the story of an IRA hunger striker.
At the same time his girlfriend Emma English – constantly at Delaney’s side – was abused and insulted on social media.
At the Ireland v USA match in the Aviva last week the Presidential Suite was packed. But it was glamorous models from Assets Agency who filled the room, not bona fide football fans.
Former Miss Ireland Emma Waldron was joined by fellow models Faith Barnett, Pamela Ryan and Lisa Hogan in the luxury suite. And all of the models thanked not the FAI or even John Delaney but his girlfriend for extending them the VIP treatment.
Emma works in fashion and event PR but she does not work for the FAI. An FAI spokesman confirmed Emma had been asked by a representative of the association to extend the models invitations. The
‘I sing a large number of songs’
new Jack Charlton Lounge opened that night and the FAI was eager to capitalise on the occasion.
‘Catherine Tiernan [who works as a marketing executive for the FAI] knows Emma English and asked her to invite some people to generate some publicity about the new suite in the stadium,’ said a spokesman. However, it is not clear what football fans would make of the invitations to the models.
It was later that same night that Mr Delaney got himself into hot water by singing in the pub.
Attempts were made at first to deny it was Delaney on the video. On separate occasions an FAI spokesman and a London-based law firm blankly denied Delaney’s involvement.
The FAI’s Peter Sherrard refused last weekend to return calls and texts from this newspaper about Delaney’s appearance on the video.
On the Friday following the match Delaney and his partner Emma jetted out of Dublin for a weekend in Puerto Banus. They dined with socialite Virginia Macari and her fiancé Kaste Dahl, who faces fraud charges in Norway. Dahl has previous convictions for fraud, drugs and firearms and is awaiting trial.
When asked about dining with Dahl in Marbella, Delaney said he had ‘no comment’ to make.
After their weekend in Spain the couple flew home into a media maelstrom. The video had gone viral and he was front-page news.
The executive was criticised for his lack of judgment. While he apologised, he said that the video had been recorded ‘in a sly way’.
‘First of all, “Joe McDonnell” is a song that has been sung in my presence and I have chipped in on a number of occasions in the past.
‘I am not somebody who supports violence at all. When you sing a
‘I’m not somebody who supports violence’
song like that, you don’t believe in every word that is in the song. I sing a large number of songs. It’s normally done in a private way when there is a sing-song. It’s a typically Irish thing we do.’
But Belfast-born FIFA vice president Jim Boyce said he was ‘shocked and saddened’ by Delaney’s ‘stupidity’. ‘This type of behaviour from the chief executive of the FAI has to be condemned,’ he said.