Twelve months ago there were two Irish women in charge of Premier League clubs, and the charge levelled against them in the male-dominated world in which they worked was that neither knew much about football. One, Margaret Byrne of Sunderland AFC, would not get the chance to disprove the charge as she later resigned over the mishandling of a case involving Adam Johnson, the Sunderland player convicted and jailed over child sex offences. The other, Leicester City’s Susan Whelan, would cheerfully admit to being no footie expert, despite having just helped guide the east midlands club to victory in the Premier League, the greatest shock in the history of the competition.
Modesty is said to be one of Whelan’s strengths. She has a light touch and doesn’t possess the kind of giant ego that occasionally causes chief executives of other clubs to trip up, such as when they come to the rostrum to collect their medal at the end of a successful campaign. The 52-year-old, originally from Howth in north Dublin, prefers to stay in the background. Whelan would probably be the first to acknowledge that recent claims that she was responsible for last summer’s firing of the Leicester manager Nigel Pearson and the inspired hiring of his successor Claudio Ranieri are far-fetched.
The club, nicknamed the Foxes, has enough cockerels around to claim the credit for those decisions. Aiyawatt Srivaddhanaprabha, the Thai vice-charman of Leicester City, did so last week, but with some justification.
Whelan’s role with the Foxes is a vital and a valuable one. She already held a senior position at King Power, the Thai duty-free retailing company that owns Leicester City, before she took up the job as chief executive at the club. Her appointment in 2011 coincided with an upturn in the club’s fortunes, but when Leicester went on a goodwill tour of Thailand last summer it turned into something of a disaster. Three of the fringe players, among them the son of then manager Pearson, filmed themselves in an orgy with some local women and posted footage of their exploits back to friends in England, where they eventually emerged in public. To compound matters, racist language was allegedly used in the video.
Nigel Pearson had already been involved in a number of scrapes, and it is thought that he tried to defend his son from the racist allegations at least. As his relationship with the owners reached breaking point, it was Whelan who had to oversee the departure of somebody with whom she was on good terms and who still had the backing of the majority of the club’s fans.
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“She is a bridge between the owners and the established football people at the club,” said Rob Tanner, the Leicester Mercury football correspondent. “The owners are very much into reputation and image, and it is vital that they are held in high esteem in their own country. That incident last summer would have been a big issue for them.” Whelan negotiated Pearson’s departure with Mickey Walsh, a former Republic of Ireland international and now a football agent with the former Leicester manager as one of his clients. “Things were a little frosty at first, but she’s a true professional and she didn’t let personalities get in the way in all the dealings I had with her,” said Walsh on Friday. “She was cordial and warm. We had a glass of wine, so there was not a problem there. She is more of a businesswoman, but she is a quick learner, and had to learn on her feet really.”
To her former classmates at Manor House convent school in Raheny, Whelan’s success probably comes as no surprise. The school has produced several high-achieving women, such as the RTE newsreader Eileen Dunne and the Riverdance producer Moya Doherty.
Whelan was head girl in her final year, 1981. “Unlike a lot of head girls, she was liked by everybody,” said one former classmate. “Issues can arise surrounding things like dresses for the debs night, but Susan never had a bad word to say about anybody. She had already moved on to the next thing. Being a student at the school, a lot would have been expected of her afterwards. There were no jobs in Ireland at that time, and a lot of girls went straight into secretarial courses. But at Manor House, girls were pushed harder.”
Whelan worked at her family’s jewellery shop Sleaters, just off Grafton Street, and is thought to have studied marketing at what is now the Dublin City University in Glasnevin. She joined Aer Rianta International as a buyer in 1990, and it was while working on a project in Bangkok that she met Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha, owner of King Power, who invited her to work for him. She has risen to senior executive vice-president there, and joined the board at Leicester five years ago after moving to England.
Recently, she married her long-time boyfriend, the English architect Robbie Gill.
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With the club’s success, it is likely that footballing matters will now take up more of Whelan’s time.
Having established a reputation for being able to deal with the toughest operators in the duty-free business, such as Chanel and Dior, who jealously protect their profit margins, Whelan may have to get her hands dirty in the world of football for some time yet. No doubt she will come up smelling of roses.