Experts query FAI legal action over ‘handball’

Sports law experts have openly queried how any FAI legal action over the French ‘handball’ goal in the 2009 World Cup play-off would have succeeded — despite it resulting in a €5m payment from world governing body Fifa.

Amid more calls for the FAI to publish details of the deal, which was previously covered by a confidentiality agreement with Fifa, world football figures castigated the arrangement.

The president of the German Football Federation Wolfgang Niersbach, said: “It is a joke that they [Fifa] paid this money out to stop the Irish taking them in front of court.”