FAI to address missed manager deadline as search draws a blank

Director of football Marc Canham does not have anybody lined up imminently to fill the vacancy.

POLITICAL FOOTBALL:FAI director of football Marc Canham. Pic: Stephen McCarthy/Sportsfile

The FAI will today issue an update attempting to explain their latest missed deadline for appointing a new manager.

Marc Canham’s vow to unveil Stephen Kenny’s successor in early April hit the buffers recently when talks broke down with Gus Poyet, the former Greece manager now out of contract.

Other candidates such as Chris Hughton have been sounded out since that plan went awry but it’s understood director of football Canham has nobody lined up imminently to fill the vacancy.

John O’Shea will be asked to fulfil interim duties again for the double-header of friendlies at home to Hungary on June 4 and Portugal in Aveiro a week later unless the FAI succeed in luring one of their many targets in the meantime.

More probable is an appointment over the summer months when contenders are free of their contract commitments elsewhere.

The FAI are believed to be now operating on the basis that it’s better to have the best qualified, available and affordable boss in charge for the Uefa Nations League opener against England on September 7 rather than installing a name originally well down the pecking order.

This was flagged as the week that the identity of the supremo would be revealed but the only announcement so far was the predicted departure of chief executive Jonathan Hill on Monday.

He had been part of the headhunting team alongside Canham and Packie Bonner, to the fore of hatching deals on prospective bosses. A legacy of Hill’s three-and-a-half year reign will be his inability to deliver a manager.

These two topics were uppermost on the agenda when the FAI’s chairman Tony Keohane addressed staff on Thursday at a Townhall meeting called during this latest turbulent week for Irish football.

The former Tesco CEO oversaw a 40-minute event, inviting staff to suggest issues for discussion on a flip chart and fielding a variety of questions, the first of which centred on the saga around the managerial vacancy.

By this weekend, 150 days will have elapsed since Kenny was relieved of his duties.

Recognising that the communication on this very public wait has been substandard, he promised an update from the board over the next 24/48 hours without elaborating on the details. This is expected to be a holding statement.

There was more meat in the timeline around the recruitment of Hill’s successor. Chief operating officer David Courell has taken caretaker charge and the protocols around advertising, interviewing and potentially the favoured candidate serving notice elsewhere is expected to last six months up until the end of the year.

A wishlist of desired values for the newcomer were discussed, empathy being foremost.

Other items such as next month’s hearing at the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) instigated by a cohort of unionised staff unhappy with a lack of progress on issue resolution with Hill got an airing, as did the thorny topic of government funding.

Pleas by one employee for the FAI to improve their public affairs dealings with the state’s paymasters was agreed with by Keohane.

Political networking is essential for an association seeking over half of its €863m, 15-year facilities plan to be subsidised by the exchequer.

In that context, Hill’s disastrous testimony to the Dáil’s Public Accounts Committee on February 22 has derailed the timeline, torpedoing the notion of ringfenced grants in excess of the usual large scale and sports capital schemes being awarded in the lifetime of this government.

As noted by the speaker, that liaison was once the preserve of John Byrne before he became a victim of John Delaney’s dictatorship and his absence within the corridors of power, lobbying for a fairer share of the handouts, has been sorely missed.