MOST REIGNS AT the FAI end with a late-night statement, and so it proved to be for Vera Pauw.
Following a six-hour meeting yesterday, the 11-person FAI board decided not to renew Pauw’s contract beyond its end on Friday. Shortly after 10pm, CEO Jonathan Hill phoned Pauw to inform her of the decision, and the news was communicated to the country with a statement issued at 10.45pm.
By that stage, board members had left Abbottstown to return home.
In the end, it was less a night of long knives than it was a night of heavy sighs.
Well-placed sources say the board found the decision difficult: some members made the case for an extension, and there remains a high level of respect for Pauw’s unprecedented achievements with Ireland.
But having been presented with a review of the World Cup campaign by director of football Marc Canham, the board had to make a decision on Pauw’s contract. Her methods were successful, but were they sustainable?
The answer, eventually, was no.
In an overhaul led by Marc Canham, the FAI are changing the role of women’s national team manager to ‘head coach’, one who focuses fully on football, aligns with the approach of underage sides, and is happy to delegate to other staff members. Pauw was deemed to be the wrong person for this more collaborative role. The FAI want to change, but knew that Pauw was not for changing.
Canham’s review of the World Cup didn’t solely focus on the manager’s position, and included the qualifying campaign along with the tournament in Australia. It took input from Pauw, members of staff, and a select group of players, which included those who played at the World Cup, those who travelled but sat on the substitutes bench, and those who were involved in qualifying but did not make the final squad.
It included reviews of operations, communications and logistics, along with aspects of management style, strength and conditioning, and tactics.
Abbottstown sources told The 42 that there was no single reason the board decided to cut ties with Pauw, but instead a series of compounding issues that convinced them she was not the right person to take the squad forward into the 2025 European Championship campaign.
Sources insist the board did not bow to “player power” in making their decision, but while player sentiment was not the sole rationale, it was a significant factor.
Pauw lost support in the dressing room, and the coolness in relations between players and manager was evident during the World Cup.
Jonathan Hill declined press engagements at the World Cup in Australia, and so the vacuum around Pauw’s future beyond the tournament was filled by the players who were made available for comment at press conferences. While some were complimentary of Pauw, none went as far as saying she should be given a contract renewal. That stands in contrast to the senior men’s squad, who all spoke in support of Stephen Kenny’s contract renewal when the FAI last made a decision like this.
The players were frustrated with individual aspects of Pauw’s preparations and methods during the World Cup. A lack of variation at attacking set-pieces was an issue while there was bafflement at the half-time substitution of Lucy Quinn for Abbie Larkin against Canada at the World Cup as it was made without the rest of the team being informed.
There was also discomfort among players with Pauw’s approach to physical training and strength and conditioning. Ahead of the World Cup, she enlisted the help of Dutch coach Raymond Verheijen, an expert in periodisation, which centres on the balancing of rest and workload. Verheijen is best-known as a pugnacious figure on Twitter, and has been an outspoken critic of Jurgen Klopp’s methods at Liverpool.
Pauw has utter conviction about her approach to physical training, to the point she is writing a book about injury prevention. Pauw advises against weightlifting, as she believes it increases the risk of groin and hamstring injuries along with ACL ruptures.
“It’s very technical, but on the big muscle groups you get strength, whereas in football, you need to move from the core”, she explained at a press conference last year.
But Pauw’s methods differ to what many of her players experience at club level. Some players, for instance, were discouraged by Pauw from making top-up runs to maintain their weekly number of high-speed metres, as they would at their clubs. As Pauw’s time in the job progressed, more of her players experienced more modern physical preparation techniques at their clubs: there were more professional players in Ireland’s World Cup squad than were included in Pauw’s first squad in 2019, for instance.
Pauw strongly believes in her methods and the FAI knew she was not going to adapt them, and so, in keeping with their new strategy, decided they needed to part ways.
Looking back at Pauw’s first squad for the Euro 2021 qualifier with Ukraine reveals a deep irony, as listed among the forwards is Katie McCabe. Ireland’s attacking ambition in any given game under Pauw could be summed up by whichever position McCabe found herself in. She played at left-wing back throughout the World Cup, and her infamous request for “fresh legs” around her in the second-half against Nigeria was to give her fresh cover and allow her raid forward.
Pauw’s defensive approach is another aspect which the FAI want to evolve, and Louise Quinn spoke to this in an appearance on RTÉ after the tournament.”I think we really have to push on and figure out how we create more goals, apart from set pieces”, said Quinn.
Events before the departure to the World Cup lost Pauw some support among senior figures at the FAI. The FAI firmly backed Pauw in December, when allegations were first made against her regarding her time at Houston Dash. A report by the NWSL and its players union accused Pauw of making inappropriate comments regarding players’ weight and attempted to influence their eating habits, allegations Pauw has emphatically denied. The FAI backed Pauw at the time. CEO Jonathan Hill said there was no similar issues raised by players at the FAI, and the Association believed it was unfair that Pauw’s name was included in a report with others who were accused of much more serious transgressions.
But support for Pauw waned when the allegations resurfaced in the the media five days before Ireland left for Australia. The Athletic interviewed four of Pauw’s former players and three staff members from Houston on condition of anonymity, and they claimed Pauw created a “culture of fear” at the club, and made comments about a player’s weight and appearance. Pauw strongly rejected the claims, saying they were part of an “agenda” driven by “someone trying to destroy my career.”
Pauw revealed that the Athletic story indirectly came from her own request. First she was approached for a story regarding player safety, with which she co-operated while asking the Athletic, “When do you start thinking of the double standards and not only protecting players from coaches but also coaches from players?”
That the story returned to the headlines the week of Ireland’s farewell game against France has been described by insiders as “needless.” Significantly, contract renewal negotiations with Pauw were put on ice that same week.
Pauw then went against her bosses wishes in spending the vast majority of a 27-minute press conference on the eve of the France game answering questions about the allegations, rather than shut it down with her opening question. There were only five questions asked about the match itself.
As is custom at a pre-match press conference, Katie McCabe sat beside Pauw throughout, and betrayed her frustration when it ended. “It’s been a pleasure talking about the World Cup, guys”, she said. “Really appreciate it.” Senior figures at the FAI felt McCabe was put in an unfair and difficult position.
Pauw’s lustre dimmed among sponsors, too: it was notable that she was a much less visible presence in pre-tournament advertisements than she had been in ads earlier in her tenure. There is no suggestion this came at the request of anyone at the FAI.
The furore around the France game set the tone for a World Cup filled with distraction and off-field headlines. The abandoning of the pre-tournament friendly against Colombia at Pauw’s behest was curious, given her Irish side pride themselves on their physicality.
But while Pauw exacerbated off-field stories in her time in charge, she dealt deftly with others, and is credited with a leading role in defusing the controversy around the dressing room’s chanting ‘ooh, ahh, up the Ra’ in celebration of the play-off win over Scotland.
Pauw’s trademark candour also led to a valedictory flashpoint with McCabe, revealing at her post-match press conference that McCabe had asked for a substitution in the second half against Nigeria, claiming she wanted “fresh legs” down her side and that Sinead Farrelly would be withdrawn. McCabe tweeted a zipped-mouth emoji in response, and history seemed to repeat itself as Ireland travelled home from a World Cup with their captain and manager in open dispute. This time, at least, the captain made it onto the pitch at the tournament.
Mick McCarthy could not endure amid a poisonous public backdrop in 2002, but the same did not exist with Pauw: she retains big support among a vast swathe of the Irish public.
But despite that, the FAI have moved on. Eileen Gleeson will take charge on an interim basis, beginning the Nations League campaign against Northern Ireland at the Aviva Stadium on 23 September. Gleeson is not a contender for the job on a full-time basis, as Marc Canham will lead the recruitment of a candidate the FAI deem most fitting for their more modern interpretation of the role.
Vera Pauw won’t keep the Ireland job but she won’t soon be forgotten, and will be remembered as a coach whose iron will brought Ireland to the World Cup and took her all the way to a lonely, late-night call from the FAI to say thanks, Vera, but it’s time to move on.
With reporting by Emma Duffy
