FAI director of football Marc Canham said it was never the association's intent to 'deliberately mislead anyone' as they finally unveiled new Republic of Ireland head coach Heimir Hallgrimsson on Thursday afternoon.
FAI director of football Marc Canham said it was never the association's intent to"deliberately mislead anyone" as they finally unveiled new Republic of Ireland head coach Heimir Hallgrimsson on Thursday afternoon.
In March, Canham said"existing contractual obligations" were holding up the process of bringing in a new boss, but committed to an April announcement. That never transpired, with several names subsequently rumoured to be in the running, including Gus Poyet, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, Roy Keane, Willie Sagnol, Anthony Barry and Chris Coleman."Contrary to what has been written and said it was never, ever our intent to deliberately mislead anyone," he said.
"We made the decision that Heimir was our number one candidate. We hoped to conclude that process, it wasn't possible. Heimir was consistent all the way through that he was committed to the Nations League and Copa America. The learning from us was the we shouldn't have communicated that we hoped to make an announcement at this point."
Courell said the announcement had to come in the middle of the women's international window"due to a range of factors", later elaborating:"We didn't want to go head-to-head with the women's national team's fixtures. We're away against England on Friday, at home to France on Tuesday. Obviously it's a two-stage announcement so the reality is Heimir, we wanted to make sure he was up and running with as much advance preparation time for September as possible.
"When you have some interest from different areas you of course think about the pros and cons. In this case there were a lot of positives," he said.
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