THE LACK OF public support for Vera Pauw by the FAI in recent weeks was up for discussion on today’s Football Family podcast, available to subscribers to The 42.
Pauw has publicly expressed her desire to sign a new contract, with her current one expiring at the end of the World Cup. And now relations with Ireland’s captain Katie McCabe appear strained as Pauw said she made the decisions after McCabe pleaded for substitutions to be made in the second half of Ireland’s 0-0 draw with Nigeria.
It has culminated in a feeling that Pauw’s time as Ireland manager is likely coming to an end shortly after Ireland competed in a World Cup for the first time.
“I wonder what changed,” The 42 sports writer Gavin Cooney said. “The allegations that emerged in the US last December, they (The FAI) fully backed her then, completely. And then, ok the timing of that Athletic article wasn’t great, the week of the France game, but there was nothing new in that, there was nothing substantially new in those allegations.
“And the FAI, we were led to believe, were negotiating for a new contract and then it was put on pause that week and maybe put on pause to focus on the World Cup, but they’ve certainly allowed the vacuum to take form and it’s been filled now with any amount of conjecture and opinion about Pauw’s position.”
David Sneyd, football writer at The 42, said: “Something has definitely changed in the background of how vociferous the FAI were in their support, and now the amount of silence that’s actually there.”
Cooney expressed sympathy for Sinead Farrelly, who was apparently the player McCabe urged Pauw to withdraw in the second half against Nigeria.
“Plus like, what must Sinead Farrelly think? There’s your captain who you’ve been tracking back, you’ve meant to be covering her to allow her to go forward, tactically throughout the game, and here she is saying: ‘Take her off she’s too tired’.
“I think there’s an interview afterwards with Tony O’Donoghue where she had said she had vowed that she would complete 90 minutes. There are very specific reasons that playing a full game was very important to her, so imagine how she feels, to hear her captain, the team’s talismanic player, saying she’s too tired she should go off.”
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