Voices
In 2004, the newly appointed Liverpool manager Rafael Benitez flew to Portugal to meet two players who would be central to his plans for the club.
Steven Gerrard and Jamie Carragher were part of England’s squad at the European Championships in Portugal and Benitez wanted to talk to them about his ideas for the coming season.
Benitez’s observation to Gerrard when they met gave an indication of his approach. “You run around too much,” he told the player who had been praised for single-handedly earning Liverpool’s qualification for the Champions League. Gerrard’s response was also telling. “I don’t think you realise,” he told his new manager, “how bad we are.”
Gerrard’s response came to mind watching Stephen Kenny lay out his vision for Irish football before the Serbia game and why he felt it was important that the manager strived for something bigger than just trying to win the next game.
Kenny’s approach is brave and selfless as he may not be the manager who reaps the benefits of the work he is trying to do.
Some of those who insist this is abstract nonsense and that football is a results business were also among those who quibbled with the performance when Ireland got a good result against Serbia.
Irish football has been wrestling with how bad it is for ten years and debating the ways of curing that badness for even longer.
For some the solution was to be defined by the badness, to see every player as a possible threat to the philosophy of merely mitigating this badness. Playing international football for Ireland was, in this analysis, like working in a nuclear power plant and if the players didn’t rigidly follow protocols there would be a catastrophic meltdown. It was no surprise if players developed an aversion to taking risks or what we might understand as playing football.
Kenny has taken the other approach: ‘What’s the worst that can happen?’ he may be asking his players as he sends them out to casually knock the ball around in their own box, seemingly oblivious to the potentially catastrophic consequences of ignoring operating procedures and safety precautions.
This approach led to a penalty against Portugal and some alarming moments against Serbia. It may also be an essential part of the development of the Ireland side and the development of the players within it.
Those mistakes are not the worst thing that can happen. The worst that can happen from Kenny’s point of view is that Kenny’s Ireland could be booed off the field and the manager sacked from a job that means so much to him.
That is why there is a courage to what Kenny is doing that needs to be rewarded by the FAI. It is a courage which appeared to be acknowledged by the supporters at the game who responded to this approach – particularly a approach which contained a number of young players who were central to it – in the game against Serbia.
The crowd might have been galvanised by Kenny’s pre-match press conference when he went further in outlining why he felt his job required more than just averting catastrophe.
“Win the next game, that’s your job,” was how Kenny characterized the other world view. “That kind of near-sightedness doesn’t create anything…you’re trying to build something that can be tangible over a period of time.”
Kenny is trying to negotiate a nuanced position: he insists that Ireland have the players to play the more daring football he believes they can while also stressing that they can’t do it successfully just yet.
It is an experiment which needs commitment. Last summer, Kenny explained what had happened in Irish football over the previous years.
“Because of austerity at the FAI over the last number of years, some of the international teams at underage level may not have been resourced in the ways they might have wanted.
“That has a knock-on effect, as it affects how they do in qualifying for tournaments and how players come through.
“We haven’t seen players come through. We have Jeff Hendrick and Robbie Brady at 28 who have come through, and nobody for nine years until Aaron Connolly came through, aside from the two Cork City players, Alan Browne and Sean Maguire.”
It may be simplistic to blame the absence of players solely on FAI austerity but the financial mismanagement certainly hasn’t helped. Player development also requires some luck and there may be a manager who benefits from their timing the way managers at, say, Wales have benefitted from being able to call on Gareth Bale.
Ireland are still hoping for that player to emerge. If, for example, Jack Grealish and Declan Rice had stayed with Ireland, the conversation about Stephen Kenny would be very different. It might even still be a conversation about Martin O’Neill.
No manager can alone solve the problem that the absence of a world class creative player causes for a side like Ireland.
There may be a solution in trying to overcome this absence through risk aversion, but Kenny believes that won’t take you too far. He is part of a senior management group within the FAI and he sees his role as bigger than that.
The emergence of Gavin Bazunu and Andrew Omobamidele has at last allowed people to believe that there may be young players who can help this project develop.
These players provide some hope but they also offer Kenny some protection. Young players offer potential and promise and nobody wants to destroy that promise by sounding like a cynic who talks about the real world.
How long the real world can be ignored is a question for the FAI but reality can be bleak too.
Perhaps the supporters who made so much noise on Tuesday night had also paid attention to the stories in a couple of newspapers that Kenny could be sacked if Ireland lost to Serbia and had been galvanised by the short list of managers mentioned as potential replacements.
It was a reminder that the worst that can happen isn’t drawing at home to Azerbaijan. There is a parallel universe, a worst case scenario which may only be avoided because Sam Allardyce’s salary demands might be beyond the financial reach of the FAI.
It was also a reminder of the stupidity of abandoning this daring experiment now or even at the end of the campaign.
There is no point committing to this painful process and then backing out when it appears to be too tough.
Kenny needs some gifted Irish players to emerge to add substance to his vision but his vision may also be an essential component in creating an environment for those gifted players to emerge.
The FAI’s CEO Jonathan Hill undoubtedly realises the state Irish football is in and how bad things were when he took over.
His comments on Friday that the FAI was “thinking strategically and we are thinking in a medium- to long-term way” were something to welcome, as were his remarks that “I am not uncomfortable with him [Stephen Kenny] talking about where he sees a young group of players going.”
Kenny might not get there with them, but his vision can’t be abandoned now or at the end of this campaign but only when the qualifiers for the 2024 European Championships have been negotiated.
This too may be a brave new world for Irish football. But it’s better than the alternative of viewing international football like a wasteland where a team like Ireland can only survive, not prosper.
