Start gifting
Libro.fm for Business
Start a membership, get two free audiobooks
Almost ready!
In order to save audiobooks to your Wish List you must be signed in to your account.
Log in Create account
Shop the sale
In celebration of Independent Bookstore Day, shop our limited-time sale on bestselling audiobooks from April 22nd-28th. Don’t miss out—purchases support your local bookstore!
Shop nowChampagne Football
This audiobook uses AI narration.
We’re taking steps to make sure AI narration is transparent.
Learn moreBrought to you by Pengun.
THE NO.1 BESTSELLER!
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
Originally from Donegal, Mark Tighe is the legal correspondent of The Sunday Times in Ireland. As well as covering legal affairs, he specialises in investigative reporting. He was Irish newspaper news reporter of the year in 2018 and 2019. In 2019 he also won the Journalist of the Year award for his reporting on the FAI.
Born and raised in Dublin, Paul Rowan is the Irish football correspondent for The Sunday Times, and the author of The Team That Jack Built. In 2019 he was joint winner of the NewsBrands Campaigning Journalism and Investigative Journalism awards (alongside Mark Tighe and Colin Coyle) for his work on the FAI.