LEAN TIMES FOR KENNY BUT HOPE SPRINGS ETERNAL
WHEN international soccer is played again, it will be spring and the days will be lengthening and the world could be struggling out of i s current awful bind.
And in that spirit of renewal, the Ireland team might score a goal.
Stephen Kenny has had a great deal to contend since taking over as international manager, but by the end of this jerky, dislocated game it had been reduced to the frantic search for a goal.
Kenny had a padded coat on at the start of the match, but it was discarded after a few minutes, then reintroduced during a second half seized by a cold winter grip. The wind screeched around
“A goal would be evidence of some progress”
the Aviva Stadium, and the sound of gates rattling against concrete in the gale was easily made out.
But Kenny stood in his suit, his hands in his pockets waiting to see what his taped-together team might achieve.
The answer came in agonising, incoherent rasps. This was a team that had never played together, a side that Kenny would never have envisaged selecting, and they played that way.
The injuries and illnesses that have depleted his squad are now being reported in more unsparing detail than NPHET briefings, and the circumstances in which he has tried to pick teams during the last two international windows have been extraordinary.
But expectations adjusted in step with that, too. The suspicion that there is an anti-Kenny movement mobilised and ready to demand his removal is based on little more than the noise made by a few big mouths on social media. But just because Kenny’s determination to upgrade Ireland’s game is well-placed, and justified by the dismally familiar way the last three management teams have failed, does not mean pressure was not starting to build before last night.
The demand was not for tikitaka worthy of Guardiola- era Barcelona, or gegenpressing to set Jurgen Klopp’s mighty smile ablaze. A goal would have been a start, and after many minutes of dislocated play, one came close to materialising. Passes had been mis-hit, hands thrown up in exasperation and some players just looked exhausted.
Then Kenny was left with his head in his hands in the 39th minute when James Collins headed over from close in, following excellent work from the tireless Daryl Horgan.
It’s not that one goal is going to liberate an animating spirit that will transform Irish soccer, but a struggling group and their manager plainly need the lift.
It would bring modest but still tangible evidence of progress.
And Bulgaria looked agreeable fall-guys. They had their own troubles with Covid-19 casualties before this game, and on a perishing night in an Irish winter, those called to serve didn’t look ready to do anything required in the name of beloved Bulgaria.
As Ireland continued to dominate the ball into the second half, one enduring truth about Irish teams became clear. Kenny is now fully appraised of a reality that his successors, including Jack Charlton, came to understand: an Ireland team cannot function effectively while without any of its better players.
And Kenny was missing three of his best back four, two of his preferred midfield three, and all of his most effective forwards.
This should soften talk about Ireland having the players to play a progressive game. Ireland have a very good cluster of five or six around which Kenny is entitled to believe he can build a decent team. As soon as that core is diminished, so are the wider ambitions.
There has been a great deal of talk about how rotten Kenny’s luck has been. Luck is a concept that makes the best managers shudder. They crave control and the power that bends events to their will. They disdain sympathy, and there is no reason to suppose Kenny differs in that regard.
There has been the unsettling sound of restlessness from some quarters as successive international windows have brought defeats, no goals and Covid-19 chaos.
The manager was defensive this week in response to questions about the robustness of Ireland’s bubble, given the much higher incidence of cases in his squad compared to England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland.
This will surely be a matter of utmost urgency whenever his first months in the job are assessed. Kenny, to his credit, has not resorted to excuses after defeats, but someone with ambitions of thoroughly recasting the national team will presumably bring forensic attention to anything that imperils those plans.
He had his face in his hands in the 68th minute when a tremendous Robbie Brady shot hit the crossbar, this after Ronan Curtis and Collins had scoring chances earlier in the half.
When a team is in a rut like this, there can be a tendency to portray every mundane function as a positive. ‘Well at least they came out for the second half’, that kind of condescending talk.
Ireland chased the win, with Kenny putting on Seanie Maguire and Troy Parrott for the final five minutes.
Why wouldn’t he? But then you remembered those other regimes, when going bald-headed for a win was rarely pursued.
Martin O’Neill did it at half-time in that misbegotten World Cup play-off against the Danes in 2017, when Ireland were torn asunder.
There was no danger of that last night. Instead, the wait — for fit players, for a vaccine, for goals — goes on.
“Kenny, to his credit, has not made excuses”