The FAI have denied intending to show disrespect to the Ireland’s women’s team by unveiling their new men’s team boss Heimir Hallgrímsson.
This decision to unveil the Iceland native yesterday, led to an unfortunate clash of press briefings with the women’s team who are finishing off preparations ahead of their Nations League clash with England.
The FAI have faced huge criticism after missing two previously set deadlines to appoint a successor to Stephen Kenny, but they have said that Halgrímsson was their first choice and that they were unable to appoint him earlier, due to his commitments as manager of the Jamaican national team.
Heimir Halgrímsson was officially unveiled to the media as the new Republic of Ireland manager yesterday on a 17 month contract.
“absolute respect”
The FAI have been put under scrutiny, with the timing of this unveiling also coming on the same day as the Ireland women’s side faced the media ahead of their clash with England this evening.
They have also been under the microscope after facing questions regarding the revelations made by RTÉ Investigates and the Irish Independent about unwanted sexual advances and homophobia against female footballers from former coaches in the 1990s.
A group representing these players also released a statement.
Speaking yesterday, interim FAI CEO David Courell had this to say.
“We have tried to pay absolute respect to the women’s national team”, he said. “We had spoken to Eileen Gleeson [the Ireland women’s team manager] in advance of the announcement. She understands this is the reality of professional football”.
He also added: “Unfortunately, the calendar is jam-packed. There’s never an ideal time for these announcements. The reality is we had secured our preferred candidate. We wanted to get going”.
Range of factors
David Courell also stated that the decision to host the press briefing yesterday was unavoidable.
“Our preference would have been to make this announcement at a different time, but due to a range of factors we had to proceed [yesterday]”, he insisted.
“We communicated this to the group of women in advance and we have asked for their understanding”.
“I wish to stress that we do not want to diminish or try to move on from what is a matter of the utmost seriousness”.
He also added: “Despite this being an important day for Irish football, those courageous women remain at the forefront of our thoughts and we reiterate our support for them and commit to ensuring it remains the top priority for the association”.
“safe place”
Elsewhere, Marc Canham who is the director of football for the FAI, also said that it was important for the association to make football a “safe place” for women.
“Hopefully, we can take some positives from this and build on positive work that has been done in recent years around safeguarding and make sure that never, ever happens again”.
While admitting that the FAI must learn from their mistakes in missing previous deadlines for appointing a new manager, Canham also insisted that they were not trying to deliberately fool the public.
“Contrary to what’s been written and said, it was never, ever our intention to deliberately mislead anyone,” he said.
“I think if we had our time again, we wouldn’t communicate it in that way. The learnings we had from that is setting timelines that created expectations that we would make an appointment at a point”.
