Champagne Football

John Delaney and the Betrayal of Irish Football: The Inside Story

By: Mark Tighe, Paul Rowan

Narrated by: Johnny Candon

Length: 10 hrs and 10 mins

Publisher's summary

Brought to you by Penguin.

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Over the course of 15 years, John Delaney ran the Football Association of Ireland as his own personal fiefdom. He had his critics, but his power was never seriously challenged until last year, when Mark Tighe and Paul Rowan published a sequence of stories in the Sunday Times containing damaging revelations about his personal compensation and the parlous financial situation of the FAI. Delaney's reputation as a great financial manager was left in tatters. He resigned under pressure and the FAI was left hoping for a massive bail-out from the Irish taxpayer.

In Champagne Football, Tighe and Rowan dig deep into the story of Delaney's career and of the FAI's slide into ruin. They show how he surrounded himself with people whose personal loyalty he could count on and a board that failed to notice that the association's finances were shot. They detail Delaney's skilful cultivation of opinion-formers outside the FAI. And they document the culture of excess that Delaney presided over and benefited from, to the detriment of the organisation he led.

Champagne Football is a gripping, sometimes darkly hilarious and often enraging piece of reporting by the award-winning journalists who finally pulled back the curtain on the FAI's mismanagement.

©2020 Paul Rowan, Mark Tighe (P)2020 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

"I read it in one sitting, it's a superb book." (Eamon Dunphy, The Stand)

"An astonishing exposé." (Martin Ziegler, The Times)

"Excellent." (Irish Sun)

A shocking tale of entitlement

Knew a lot of this story before reading but to have it chronicled so well it still has a massive impact. Well done to those that brought the cartel down.

Interesting Read

Very interesting to find out the crazy details of John Delaney and his running of the FAI