Every country has its fair share of questionable characters. Many are in politcs and mesmerize with their dodginess, a good few are in business, but for some reason, the third area is an area where we are even more amazed to find self-serving and dubious behaviour in the main protagonists and in the management of that area. This third area is “Sports”. Somehow we seem to hope that sports people are all honest, trustworthy and totally above board. But interestingly, from the performance enhancing doping of the gymnast or runner via the big crooks like Lance Armstrong or Sepp Blatter, Sports seems to be the field that is just riddled with dishonesty, cheating and personal enrichment.
But little Ireland is probably not THAT much affected, right? WRONG!! Remember Pat Hickey, the president of the Olympic Council of Ireland (OCI)? He has not been charged with any offence as far as I know, but there is some lingering fishiness around the Oylmpic ticket scandal that just doesn’t seem right. His deputy (Vice-president of the OCI) was or is John Delaney, who is also head of the Football Association of Ireland (FAI). Unfortunately he never made any public statement about the ticket scandal.
At the same time he is reported to more than EUR 400,000 per year or at least EUR 360k, which is either way FAR above of what the Spanish or Italian heads of their Footbal Associations earn. And it is also SIGNIFICANTLY more than what the Irish Taoiseach or the German Chancellor Angela Merkel earn. According to this and this.
Last week the same John Delaney was voted onto the UEFA Executive Committee and the Irish Times suggests that this will come with a six figure salary and will require up to 100 days of his time per year, so in the end he will just do a half-day job for the FAI for his 360k. Here!
At the same time it emerged that the Irish Women’s Football National Team has to share their training clothes with others, are treated worse than amateur footballers and get no rewards for all their successes. The women went on strike and since then an agreement was found with them, but Delaney’s riches and their bad treatment just looks like one man pocketing big time for himself while treating others like “shit on his shoe”. www.bbc.com/sport/football/39502054
