4 June 2026; Chiedozie Ogbene during a Republic of Ireland training session at Stade Saputo in Montreal, Canada. Photo by Vaughn Ridley/Sportsfile
Judgement of the misjudgement continues as FAI distance Irish football from itself
Cathal Dervan, Editor
The management of misjudgement will be staged in three locations on Friday and hosted, once again, by those who think the Football Association of Ireland is just another business and just another Board to boost their CV.
All eyes will be on Dublin this morning for news on Israel, on Cork this evening for a big World Cup game and on Montreal late tonight for the last match of the senior men’s international season.
A busy day on the pitch. Another worrying day off it.
On paper the FAI is a member’s association where every movement should reflect the wishes, the desires and the needs of those who organise the game from Malin Head to Mizen Head, the men, women and children who play our game, organise our games and ensure that Association Football thrives in Ireland.
In reality, the game here is controlled by a Board that is now top heavy with independents, many of whom have to be subservient to Sport Ireland and the Government simply because they put them there.
Ask some of them where Glebe North FC are based and several would struggle to give you the answer. Ask them where Glebe South play and they will probably tell you south of Glebe North. There is no Glebe South FC by the way.
Beneath that Board lies a new look Senior Leadership Team that is simply afraid to upset the paymasters in Government, UEFA, FIFA and a well known Irish bank.
Together they will tell you - or a Business podcast - that the Dark Days are over as they transform Irish football for the better when all they are doing is cutting the work force back to the levels it was at before some of them were put forward as the solution to the crisis that festered pre-2019.
But are the dark days really over? When Carla Ward and Heimir Hallgrimsson send their respective women’s and men’s teams out against the Netherlands and Canada in the coming hours, the focus will switch back to actual football and we will all celebrate the Girls and Boys in Green, as we should.
Those players are the best we have, the finest representatives of a family that lives in every Irish community here at home and far away. They are our team.
For those few hours however the attention won’t turn away from the boardroom. Israel will still be a hot topic no matter what announcement is made in the coming hours.
And that begs a question. The Irish Sun broke the story on Thursday that the Board of the FAI would meet that evening to discuss the games against Israel in the autumn, in particular the home game scheduled for the Aviva on the first Sunday in October.
At the time of writing, early on Friday morning, there is still no word of what happened at that meeting. Why? And why are we surprised?
When the members of the FAI told their Board to bring a vote on sanctions against Israel to UEFA last year, the President was brave enough to stand up and say Ireland would play Israel if fate decreed as much - and tempted fate which duly delivered!
The President however made a statement and he is to be applauded for that decisiveness, no matter your view on this matter.
He offered clarity in a time of controversy but alas clarity has been a victim of the Israeli situation ever since.
When the draw was made in February for the upcoming Nations League and Israel were paired with Ireland, the suits went missing straight after the event and declined to comment. First mistake.
Their handling of the affair ever since has been a disaster. Instead of fronting up to the reality of the crisis in Gaza, they have hid behind Garda insistence that they can cope with anything an Israeli game in Dublin can throw at them. They have spoken of Government support for the game even though the Ministers for Sport threw them under the bus last week when they both confirmed they won’t attend any game against Israel.
They have ignored the Stop The Game movement and left Seamus Coleman to update the members, via the media, on the vulgarity of putting the Irish players in a no-win situation in a political debate.
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And this week they hid again. With an issue of this importance, why did the FAI not tell us what their Board decided about Israel as soon as their meeting ended on Thursday night - even if they just announced that any decision needs to be discussed with the Government and the likes of UEFA and the Gardai?
What’s the big secret? Do they seriously think season ticket holders will throw their toys out of the pram if the right thing is done here and they lose a game off the 2026 roster?
Do they really believe that the people they represent - their members - will think less of them for doing the right thing?
The lack of leadership, real football leadership, at the FAI is frightening at a time when the Dark Days are supposedly over. They’ve only just begun.
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The League of Ireland season may be on a short break but Darryl Geraghty and Cathal Dervan are still talking LOI football as they cast their eye over last weekend’s action, look ahead to the Ireland game in Canada and discuss Lily Agg’s arrival as Athlone Town manager.
As Ireland prepare for their final game of the season with Friday night’s friendly against Canada in Montreal, manager Heimir Hallgrimsson has revealed that star striker Evan Ferguson is now a serious doubt for the opening four Nations League of the autumn.
The Brighton striker had his loan spell at Roma cut short by an ankle injury sustained against Stuttgart in January and has undergone surgery to resolve the issue.
But now the Irish Sun reports that Hallgrimsson has confirmed the damage is worse than first expected as he prepares to send out a new look team against the Canadians.
Speaking pre-match in Montreal, Hallgrimsson revealed: “I spoke to him last time two or three weeks ago, and it was more damage than the doctor thought in the beginning.
“So probably now he is fully fit sometime in September or October but you never know. Hopefully it will be sooner. But I think for him and everyone, it would be wise to take this slowly and just leave it in the past instead of trying to rush it.”
A group of Celtic supporters clubs have put their names to a statement urging the club not to appoint Robbie Keane as their next manager due to his previous time as boss at Maccab Tel Aviv in Israel.
The Green Brigade are amongst the groups to have signed the statement according to a report on the Sky Sports website.
Keane, currently in South Korea for a game with the Liverpool Legends, is favourite to be offered the role after constructive talks with owner Dermot Desmond at the start of the week.
The report states that the North Curve Celtic account on X has published a list of 67 groups that have apparently endorsed the statement.
The statement says: “Celtic supporters have a long and proud history of solidarity with the Palestinian people. For us, Robbie Keane’s decision to manage Maccabi Tel Aviv during the genocide in Gaza is impossible to ignore. We urge the Celtic board to listen to supporters’ concerns and reconsider this appointment.”
Katie McCabe will lead Ireland out against the Netherlands in the big World Cup qualifier at Pairc Ui Chaoimh on Friday night but the interest in her move from Arsenal to Chelsea remains of huge interest.
Speaking at the pre-match press conference in Cork on Thursday, McCabe went into depth on the move across London as her contact at Arsenal came to an end.
“Having spent 10 or 11 years at a football club is really special,” McCabe told the media, including The42 website. “For me to be able to do that at a football club like Arsenal was amazing. I’ve got a lot of respect for every single person back at the club and all my teammates.
“I empathise a lot with the Arsenal fans at the minute. It’s not an easy thing to see a player that’s spent so long at a club going to a rival club. But at the same time, I need to put myself first.”
Andoni Iraola’s appointment as the new Liverpool manager was confirmed on Thursday when he signed a two-year contract to succeed Arne Slot in the Anfield hotseat.
The BBC quotes from a Liverpool statement confirming the news with Iraola stating: “Really excited, really excited. Because obviously you know about Liverpool, you know that it’s a big club, a massive club, one of the biggest in the world. I’m ready for the challenge.”
Chelsea and Cork fans are mourning the death of Bobby Tambling at the age of 84 following a long illness.
Still Chelsea’s second all-time record goalscorer behind Frank Lampard, Tambling settled in Crosshaven after ending his career with Cork Celtic and was well known across Leeside.
All photos on TheSportsHacks are provided by Sportsfile.com
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