FAI play down O'Brien contact

The air was thick with clarifications yesterday as spokesmen for the FAI and Denis O'Brien sought to address the fallout of the businessman's TV3 interview with Vincent Browne on Wednesday evening regarding his decision to contribute half the cost of employing Giovanni Trapattoni and his assistant, Marco Tardelli.

During the interview, O'Brien said he had made the offer to the organisation prior to Steve Staunton's departure and that he was kept well informed of how the search for Staunton's successor was going.

The clear implication was that O'Brien's offer might have influenced the attitude of those within the association generally and of John Delaney, in particular, towards Staunton. His comments also suggested that the billionaire was better informed as to how the work of the three-man recruitment panel was progressing than elected members of the association's board who were repeatedly told they could not be provided with any names or details for reasons of confidentiality.

In reply, the association issued a sparse statement outlining what they say is the sequence and timing of the events in question, while representatives for them and O'Brien attempted to provide additional guidance on what is supposed to have happened.

At the press conference on Wednesday, Delaney repeatedly said the original offer of funding came from O'Brien in November, but yesterday's statement appears to contradict this, making it clear the board were told on November 1st that it had already been received.

It is suggested that Delaney took at least five days to get back to one of Ireland's richest men and that he was unaware of exactly why O'Brien had left a telephone message for him.

The spokesman for O'Brien said that the businessman had not heard back from Delaney until after Staunton's departure, and played down the any suggestion that O'Brien had been kept "in the loop" regarding the recruitment process, insisting he had merely been given the names of the list of potential candidates drawn up by the board at one of their November meetings prior to the establishment of the three-man committee.

Yet, in his interview O'Brien said: "I suppose out of courtesy to me John Delaney just told me, 'look, here are the five or 10 people we're looking at and these are how the meetings are going'."

This might have been intended to refer to the board meetings held on November 1st and 13th, except that when asked whether he had been aware that they had been "talking to" Terry Venables, he replied that he had.

Few will complain about the outcome of the protracted search for Staunton's successor, and Trapattoni's appointment appears to have silenced those who criticised Don Givens, Don Howe and Ray Houghton for dragging their heels. But O'Brien's comments do appear to raise questions about how the process was handled within the upper echelons of the association.

There were also questions asked at Wednesday's press conference regarding the role of the British agent Jerome Anderson, in closing the association's deal with the 68-year-old Italian. Givens said Anderson had become involved because a Milan-based agent who was representing Trapattoni in the negotiations sometimes worked with Anderson.

But asked who Anderson was representing in the talks that led to Trapattoni taking on the Ireland job, Delaney said the Englishman had made an important contribution to getting a deal wrapped up on Tuesday and that he had been working for the association "at that stage".

Delaney refused to comment on what commissions had been paid to get the deal done and how much Anderson had earned for his part in delivering the signature of the former Juventus, Inter and Bayern Munich boss.

Eircom, meanwhile, have dismissed suggestions that O'Brien's involvement with the FAI might affect their sponsorship of the organisation. A spokesman said that no decision has been taken on the question of whether to seek a renewal, but that the current deal runs until the end of the year and that O'Brien's contribution towards the cost of the new management team will have no bearing on the company's deliberations between now and then.