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Niall Quinn has firmly blamed UEFA after Aaron Connolly and Adam Idah missed the crucial Euro 2020 play-off against Slovakia after being deemed close contacts to a Covid-19 case in what ended up being a false positive.
“I don’t see how this is an FAI problem,” he said, rejecting the idea that the Irish governing body was to blame after the pair missed the play-off defeat after it emerged that they sat on. the wrong seats on the Bratislava plane.
“UEFA made a terrible mistake in Slovakia and set up a chain of events.
“One thing I am going to do here, I am going to defend the operations team and the back room staff, who have barely slept last week. Let UEFA sell me a puppy and the tests in Bratislava, there are a lot of people who are working very, very hard, “he added, while providing an analysis on Virgin Media’s coverage of the Ireland-Wales match.
“The damage was done with the bogus test, but to complicate things when we return, a test of another player testing positive for Covid-19 is done.”
Quinn also criticized the time it takes to get test results, and questioned whether this is sustainable unless countries bring larger squads to parties.
“When you look at the sustainability of all this, the issue is how long it takes to retrieve all the test results in an elite sports environment.”
“I think it’s taken 28 hours for each test to come back and when they’re together for a game 3 or 4 days apart, for this to work, they’re going to have 40, 50, 60 players in the next squad.
“It’s something that I think after this round of games, UEFA needs to look at. I can’t see how you would think this is an FAI problem. UEFA was terribly wrong in Slovakia.”
Earlier in the day, Ireland coach Stephen Kenny said the backroom member who gave the false positive test was “a non-essential football member in terms of a crisis situation who traveled.” However, FAI Acting Executive Director Gary Owens disputed this saying: “Everyone on the plane has a clear role. No one traveled on the plane who didn’t need to be there.
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