Results Aren’t the Problem with Irish Football
Building an identity is an admirable ambition that’s worth giving Kenny time to achieve
It’s been another disappointing week for the Men’s Senior Irish national team. It took Portugal until the 89th and 96th minute, but they overcame Stephen Kenny’s men. Despite their valiant effort, the Boys in Green left the Estádio Algarve with nothing but pride.
On Saturday evening that pride was put to the test as Ireland failed to beat Azerbaijan in Kenny’s first home game in front of a crowd. It took a late Shane Duffy equaliser to salvage anything from another bad day for Irish football.
However, it was before the Portugal game that Kenny received his biggest blow.
Fernando Santos, the home team’s longstanding manager, showed a total apathy for their visitors. His words must have cut deep for the Irish head coach who, a year to the day, proclaimed he wanted to shed the association with a “British style.”
“We know the characteristics of these British teams. For them, the game never ends under any circumstances. They always give everything,” said Santos pre-game.
For Kenny, these words could only mean one of two things. Either Santos hasn’t bothered to research how his Ireland team plays under the assumption they’re not worth the time, or he doesn’t believe they’re any different from how his predecessors set up the team.
Neither of those options bode well for the former Dundalk manager.
Following that 1–1 draw with Azerbaijan there has been a frustrating discourse surrounding Kenny’s future as Ireland manager. But the manager has come out swinging in defence of his time in charge of the team.
It could be argued that it isn’t the national manager’s job to help develop the sport in their country, but given the pathetic state of the Football Association of Ireland over the last 20 years, there is frankly no one else in a position of power capable or willing to do so.
Kenny wants to establish an identity and that will take time.
The golden generation of the early 2000’s was a wasted opportunity to grow the game. The players were given inexperienced managers in Mick McCarthy, Brian Kerr and Steven Staunton before giving them an apathetic manager in Giovanni Trapattoni. By the time Martin O’Neill came along, they were at the tail end of their careers.
The end of the O’Neill reign was that fateful night in Dublin that saw the team lose 5–1 to Denmark in a World Cup play off second leg. The Derryman continued on for another year, but the writing was on the wall for his tenure.
McCarthy came back as a stop-gap to Kenny but at that point the quality of the crop of players had dropped off massively.
There was no more Robbie Keane, Damien Duff or John O’Shea.
All three of those were Champions League calibre players who played with mid-table Premier League level teammates.
When the players were that good, the concept of having an identity wasn’t a necessity. But the game has moved on so much since then that a method of playing is now so important.
Now, relegation threatened Premier League players take to the pitch alongside Championship and League One level players. The quality just isn’t what it used to be, so the expectations can’t be what they were.
Chasing a results-based manager like Sam Allardyce would be a total lost cause, a papering over of massive cracks.
Of course losing to Luxembourg and drawing to Azerbaijan is a far cry from the days of beating Germany and going toe-to-toe with Poland, Czech Republic and Russia. But Ireland suffered bad results during the good times, too.
The 5–2 loss to Cyprus ended any hope of qualifying for Euro 2008. A 2–1 win away to San Marino remains the worst victory in Irish football history.
Since 2017, Ireland have only beaten Gibraltar, Georgia, Moldova and Wales competitively. That’s four teams for four years. The road back to good results is a long one and there will be more pain to come.
But there is also a promising group of players coming through at underage level. Kenny has brought forward players that never would’ve been picked under previous regimes.
Adam Idah, Gavin Bazunu, Andrew Omobamidele, Jamie McGrath and Troy Parrott have all come through under Kenny.
Omobamidele made his debut in that 2–1 defeat to Portugal. That kind of birth by fire is where cult heroes can be forged. The 19-year old gave a credible performance, especially under the circumstances.
The results have been poor but there have been promising performances, too. Away to Slovakia, Serbia and Portugal have all been credible.
They lost to all of those teams — granted, the Slovakia game was on penalties — but they also were missing key players for each of those matches through covid and injury.
In fact, Kenny has yet to have a set of games that wasn’t interrupted by the pandemic in some way. The 49-year old only held his first match in front of a home crowd this week, and it wasn’t even full capacity.
Yet it’s only a few small bounces going against his side that has seen them plummet to the bottom of their qualifying group.
Éire took the lead against Serbia and Portugal. However, the quality of players of the opposition was telling.
Dusan Tadic and Aleksander Mitrovic made the difference for Serbia and, well, Cristiano Ronaldo happened against Portugal.
But even against Luxembourg and Azerbaijan, it took wonder strikes from the best players for their respective sides to beat Bazunu. Then, as they fell behind, a neurosis took hold on the Ireland team. They simply can’t score goals.
It’s obviously a fundamental part of the game and a big deal if a team isn’t scoring goals. But this Ireland side is creating chances, they’re simply not converting them.
The Portugal performance alone should have bought Kenny some time. It was easily the most impressive an Ireland team has played in over half a decade.
That they later drew with Azerbaijan is evidence that this is an ongoing reset of Irish football and we have to take the good with the bad.
Short-term pain for long-term gain is part of that and is something fans and pundits will have to accept if they want anything to change or improve about Irish football.
Because Kenny understands as well as anyone the problems of Irish football, which is why his emphasis on shedding that “British association” is so important.
We deserve our own identity and being managed by a Dub who is a League of Ireland winner is as good a way to build that identity as anywhere.
