Champagne Football
Mark Tighe and Paul Rowan
Narrated By: Johnny Candon
Duration: 10 hours and 10 minutes
What to expect
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Over the course of fifteen 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 organization 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.
'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 jaw-dropping story ... brilliant' Irish Times
'Essential reading' Irish Daily Star
'Astonishing ... Side-splittingly hilarious' Guardian
'A damming account' Sunday Independent
'An instant classic, one of the all-time great Irish sports books' Alan English
'Excellent ... includes staggering detail' Daily Mail
'A cracking read ... [An] incredible amount of jaw-dropping detail' Matt Cooper
'One of the most hotly-anticipated sport books of the year' Brendan O'Connor
'A masterpiece' Tommy Martin
'At last, the truth of his ruinous reign has been rigorously and painstakingly exposed' Irish Daily Mail
'An absolutely extraordinary book' Eoin McDevitt, Second Captains
'Remarkable. The desperate story of Irish football but also a book about how Ireland works. Outstanding' Dion Fanning
© Mark Tighe, Paul Rowan 2020 (P) Penguin Audio 2020
Genre
Association football (Soccer), Sports governing bodies, Sports management and facilities, Corruption, Business ethics and social responsibility, Public finance and taxation
Listen to a sample
Utterly COMPELLING ... I can't decide if Delaney is a machiavellian mastermind or a lucky chancer
Jaw-dropping
Essential reading
A superb piece of investigative journalism, in which a tale of tawdry venality is told with wit, verve, and just the right amount of disbelief
Astonishing ... One of the most important books published in this country. If you wanted to change Ireland, you would need to read this book
Compelling and often side-splittingly hilarious
Absolutely superb ... Good old fashioned gumboot journalism and a rollicking good read
A masterpiece
Part thriller, part warning from history, part social diary, Champagne Football is a forensic and often tragicomic investigation into the biggest story in Irish sport. It's a fantastic read
An instant classic, one of the all-time great Irish sports books ... Terrific
An extraordinary story of what happens when proper governance doesn't exist
An astonishing exposé
Brilliant ... Easily the Irish sports book of the year
The Irish sports book of the year
Stellar work
Fantastic ... A real page-turner
Remarkable. The desperate story of Irish football but also a book about how Ireland works. Outstanding
The most important Irish sports book of the year and most significant book on Irish life itself ... Exceptional
I read it in one sitting, it's a superb book ... I urge people to buy it and read it even if you're not interested in football
A jaw-dropping tale of power and ego going unchecked
A jaw-dropping story ... brilliant
A cracking read ... [An] incredible amount of jaw-dropping detail
A damming account ... brilliantly detailed
Fantastic ... The best book I've ever read about Irish football
Excellent ... includes staggering detail
Made my blood boil
One of the most hotly-anticipated sport books of the year
Astonishing ... It reads like an outrageous work of fiction with a scarcely believable cast of characters
A monumental piece of writing and investigation, a work that will go down as Irish sporting history's Woodward & Bernstein moment
The most important book ever written about Irish sport ... This is the must-read of 2020
An absolutely extraordinary book
Excellent