David Sneyd

THERE WAS A moment in David Courell’s media briefing last week when the FAI chief executive was able to manage a gentle laugh and wry smile.

It must have been a nice feeling.

Courell had been asked to expand on his point about Fifa and its president, Gianni Infantino, making progress over the last 10 years.

He began to praise the Fifa Talent Development Scheme implemented by Arsene Wenger and Jill Ellis, explaining how their expertise has “been a real asset” to the FAI, offering guidance which he felt was “a really progressive development and quite significant.”

Courell then moved on to how “youth development has been very strong” under Infantino’s watch, citing the expansion of the U-17 World Cup as well as the U-15 edition.

It was at this point The 42 pointed out that Infantino did try to sell off the latter, or at least sought private investment in the children’s tournament without informing the governing body’s council.

The interruption was a rare moment of levity, although Courell did seek to get back on message.

“Football development has been really strong. I also joined a Fifa anti-racism committee group meeting yesterday (last Thursday). I only caught the tail end of it because I had other commitments, but they were presenting on some of the social media monitoring going on.

“They are doing a lot of work in the respect space and in the women’s game. They have, I think, credit to them, through Australia and New Zealand, really elevated the World Cup on the women’s side and are pushing for greater revenue share for women’s players.

“There are a lot of positive things that have happened in Fifa over the last decade, including commercial growth and therefore greater distributions to federations.”

Ordinarily these all would have been points to flesh out further, but the only reason we were even discussing Fifa and Infantino was because Courell had earlier discussed his desire to see “institutional change at Uefa or Fifa in terms of their stance as regards to Israel and international football. When I refer to institutional, I mean at confederation level.”

When it was pointed out that the FAI endorsed Infantino’s election for president in May before “the decision was taken to rescind the letter of support” when Uefa associations began to mobilise after Infantino’s World Cup sell-off plan became public

“I think we need to reflect on…obviously we’ve changed our position on that in recent months. We along with north of 200 countries supported him originally. If you reflect over the last 10 years, there has been a lot of progress made within FIFA.”

Courell is approaching two years in the top job at Abbotstown and the fortnight to come, as well as the preceding 10 months since a motion to ban Israel from Uefa competition was first passed by General Assembly members at an FAI EGM in November 2025, will come to form a defining part of his legacy.

This is, in theory, the start of a new international campaign, yet it feels like it will be one that the FAI will never be able to shake.

All of the usual questions going into what is effectively the start of a fresh season on country duty do not apply.

Firstly, we don’t even have the opportunity to try and pose any of such questions to a member of the coaching staff or any players ahead of facing Kosovo on Thursday as the FAI decided to pull all non Uefa-mandated obligations from the schedule due to the issue of Israel.

The FAI are at odds with Uefa over playing the games yet do not dare doing anything to risk any kind of punishment.

They say it’s in the interests of players and preparations, with a need to protect the squad.

The best way to protect the players is to have not put them in this position to begin with. Hallgrímsson said on Thursday Ireland were not playing with genocide but playing against genocide.

The Israeli FA responded to this in a social media post on Monday. “We have contributed to the world and humanity in countless fields, earning an impressive number of Nobel Prizes along the way. Unfortunately, we have not yet found a cure for stupidity, ignorance and hypocrisy displayed by @IrelandFootball team coach. We’re not playing with ignorance, hypocrisy and stupidity, We’re playing against the coach who embodies them.”

A reminder, if needed, of just a small part of what Ireland are now up against.

Director of football John Martin also said he wishes the game didn’t have to be played.

The only winners from this international window will be Israel, as even if Ireland come out on top on the pitch the fact they are even sharing it provides a level of justification for the devastation the country’s government is inflicting on the Palestinian people.

Contributions to humanity? Really?

The Ireland players shouldn’t be completely absolved from responsibility, either, but the Israeli statement has only served to remind us the squad are not where any ire should be directed.

Still, a football match cannot take place without footballers. Hallgrímsson referenced last week how he spoke to each one individually and that sentiment varied on fulfilling the fixtures. But he also made the point that the unity within the squad and spirit among the group was such that players said they didn’t want to be the one to let their teammates down by not playing once it was decided by Uefa and the FAI that the games should be played.

With that in mind, and in its crudest form, let’s take it that means every Ireland player wants to play these games with Israel.

Let’s flip it for a moment.

Should those same players not be willing to stand in support of even one player who felt they were able to say they didn’t want to play against Israel? Should the squad not become one then?

There would then be no need for any single player to come out and speak individually on the matter, potentially hindering their future careers as has been suggested in conversations with some around the game regarding the domino effect of a boycott.

But the crux of the matter here is Uefa not adhering to its own statutes by suspending Israel and the FAI not having the moral backbone to make the kind of statement that its assessment of the financial and political landscape clearly made them feel was not feasible.

Progress comes in different forms. We may see some on the pitch over the next two weeks in terms of how the team play, but it should make no one in Irish football feel any better about how we’ve reached this point.