Ruthless football. Stephen Kenny said it himself. That’s what has been missing from the Republic of Ireland men’s side during his three years as manager.
That killer instinct, that refusal to bend, are traits long associated with Irish football.
The leaders of international teams I played on from 1997 to 2011 always set the tone. The grit required to carve out results in places like Greece and Scotland comes from the everyday culture of a group.
Management has a role to play but it’s the captain who truly leads. You’ve heard stories about Roy Keane’s volcanic reaction to a single pass going astray at Irish training. Roy was not always an outlier. Ray Houghton was the same when I was first called up.
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We had men who were willing to do anything to win. Or not lose. In our Dubs versus Culchie behind-closed-doors-matches, I’d swear Gary Breen was defending the very existence of his Kerry heritage. Vicious stuff.
Kostas Tsimikas should never have been given the run of the left flank in Athens or gifted a one-on-one against Chiedozie Ogbene in Dublin. Irish teams of old would target the Liverpool wing-back as much as the Greeks would go after Damien Duff.
Leave Robbie Keane up top without a pass for two possessions and he’d ignore the play to scream at me or Mark Kinsella or whoever decided that lateral play was the sensible approach.
The logic was simple with Robbie. How do we win? We score and defend for our lives. How do we score? “Give me the f*****g ball in the box.”
Robbie’s goal against the Germans at the 2002 World Cup was the definition of ruthless football. See how he cut between two defenders and stretched every sinew in his body to scoop Oliver Kahn.
The equation is not complex. Experience plus desire equals a ruthless team. The essential traits needed to fill the green shirt are meant to be passed down the ages from Robbie Keane to Evan Ferguson, from Shay Given to Gavin Bazunu.
All of us see the disconnect in Irish football between past and present. We know the chain of events that has led to the current slump. We witnessed the FAI’s neglect of the game since 2002.
I love Liam Brady but I do not agree with him. This is not the worst collection of Irish players for 50 years. It’s not even the worst in the past five years.
We have reached another low point and the performance in Athens last summer, which sparked Brady’s proclamation, came from a combination of flawed tactics by the manager and a lack of quality on the pitch.
The good times can come again, and soon, if a ruthless team is built around Bazunu, Nathan Collins and Ferguson.
In international football the revolution must come from the players, aided by management, which makes the dropping of Collins for the Gibraltar game another bizarre decision. The Brentford centre half was partially to blame for both goals against Greece in Dublin the previous Friday but Nathan possesses the ruthlessness we need. See his goal against Ukraine in Łódź. See his late header that drew a wonder save from French goalkeeper Mike Maignan in March.
Leaders must be nurtured, not benched, almost as an example to others. Everyone underperformed in our two defeats to the Greeks.
Ireland have possessed a killer instinct when a fit Séamus Coleman wears the armband. Just ask Kylian Mbappé. But Séamus has only featured in 12 of the outgoing manager’s 38 games. Without Coleman, John Egan filled the captaincy role. Without Egan, Kenny inexplicably returned to Shane Duffy.
The big Derry defender has been as good a servant to Irish football since 2012 as anyone. But Duffy was cut loose by Kenny on at least two occasions in the past three years. Gone, out of the squad. We do not know the “personal reasons” for his exclusion, so I want to tread carefully, but show me the logic behind a player going from exile to leading Ireland into crunch qualifiers against the Netherlands and Greece.
Liam Scales has been decent for Celtic in the Champions League and Duffy is starting for Norwich City in the EFL Championship but Nathan Collins is the better player.
Kenny could have left his mark on future Ireland teams by making the 22-year-old his captain last week, instead he punished him for a sub-par performance against Greece.
If not Collins, give the armband to Bazunu. These young men are not the future of Irish football, they are the present. Ruthless performances come from the established players but the management must show them the way forward. The big calls need to make sense.
The FAI have allowed this situation to fester. It feels like we are on a life raft, floating aimlessly at sea. Again. These are the dead air days. The wasted weeks. The irrelevant months. In terms of progress on the pitch, we are revisiting the worst years under John Delaney. Inaction will not solve the problem.
There has been an honesty to Kenny’s unsuccessful tenure. Yet, for every statistic he continually tosses into the public domain, a damning one can be sent his way with interest. This week he left himself open to ridicule by mentioning “11 wins, 10 losses and six draws” since “Covid ended.” How about five defeats from seven during Euro 2024 qualification?
To suggest the relentless nature of the English Championship has robbed Ireland of key players, again, leaves Kenny open to a simple question: what’s the solution? Get more players into the Premier League, he says. Okay, how?
Round and round we go.
The charade needs to end. This is not the worst Irish squad I’ve seen in my lifetime. They are exceptionally young, but there are grown men at Premier League clubs, like Ogbene, Josh Cullen and Matt Doherty to lead them when all hell breaks loose in places like Athens and Amsterdam.
Irish players used to relish these scraps. I’m not talking about star turns like Robbie or Duffer. They were the ones being targeted. It was cold-blooded figures like Richard Dunne and Kenny Cunningham who gave it back in spades.
I remember the Ireland games we won, or avoided losing, because of sheer resilience. The dressingroom was a special place after a dirty, one-nil result when we stank out the Aviva but held the line. Football has changed but winning will always require the same characteristics.
