Will the FAI have to start again?

“In general, speaking as forcibly as possible as they have about the dishonesty of certain members, who hold senior positions in FIFA, when you hear of 20 years of monies being put into bank accounts which are being used for personal usage, as opposed to your national association or confederation, that’s incredible damage. I don’t know of any world body that has been damaged so much and over a continuous period of time and what’s to come next? That’s the other question, what’s going to come next? It could be anything. Nothing surprises you know. It’s time for a change. We need to take a stand for the beautiful game.”

The words of someone who sounds outraged at corruption in football. The words of former FAI CEO John Delaney.

The footage has popped up online in recent days, seemingly from just before the 2016 FIFA Extraordinary Congress held in Zürich. What has emerged recently has been truly shocking.

Last Friday, the FAI revealed that the organisation has current net liabilities of more than €55m.

In addition, auditors Deloitte are unable to guarantee that the governing body can continue as a going concern.

It doesn't really get much worse than that.

Jobs are at risk as a result. Jobs of people who didn’t earn much and had nothing to do with the huge financial mismanagement of the organisation.

As he went through the 2018 accounts, FAI Executive Lead Paul Cooke also explained the manner in which the FAI came to a severance settlement with former CEO John Delaney, which amounted to €462,000, including a pension payment.

He also went through the 2016 and 2017 accounts, which showed some serious adjustments.

In 2016, an original profit of €2.344m was reduced by €2.278m, leaving a surplus of €66,000.

In 2017, the profit of €2.8m was adjusted by €5.8m, resulting in a restated loss of €2.9m.

These are huge discrepancies, almost mind-boggling.

One of the figureheads of Irish football Brian Kerr spoke on Virgin Media Sport on Tuesday evening.

He mentioned that 200 employees are waiting to hear what their future is and they should be the most important focus at the moment. “In the short-term, their jobs need to be saved. I think that's the most crucial thing at the moment. There are a lot of very fine people there working on the ground who have had to put up with a lack of direction and mismanagement over the past few years.”

Kerr also said that we need to learn from this and ensure that no one individual can be given such a degree of control over the FAI again.

“I don't think we can draw a line under it. We can draw a line under some of it, some of the accounts stuff, but that will drift on for a while. But we can't say it didn't happen,” he concluded.

Dundalk FC’s Brian Gartland wrote on social media this week that “the football fan, the volunteer, the FAI staff, all those that have invested in football in this country and all of us that play, coach, manage, referee or any other capacity, have been taken advantage of and sold short. We give our lives to this game, we want accountability.”