Stephen Kenny cannot stop being a football man. It was late on Wednesday night when he sat down before the television cameras and the microphones to talk about what had just happened against Portugal. Against Ronaldo.
The narcotic rush of what the aging superstar had just done to Ireland was flooding through blood streams across Europe.
The Portuguese were incandescent with delight. The Irish team, its scattering of family and friends and the visiting media were dazed and experiencing a vague sense of moral outrage.
The executives at Manchester United must have nodded at their sagacity as they watched the highlights of Ronaldo’s eleventh-hour deliverance, his latest miracle, the image of his naked torso in the arabesque of victory lighting their phone feeds.
Ignore the crankiness and the alarmingly blunted sabre of the returning god for an hour. The storyline was cinematic and timed to absurd perfection.
When Ronaldo delivered that bullet of a winning goal, the camera turned to Stephen Kenny. His expression didn’t change. Here was the latest of a cataclysmic incident of bad luck visited on his team.
The bad luck had nothing to do with Ronaldo because the goal was one of outrageous opportunism and cold self-belief. It was because Matej Jug, the Slovenian referee, was clearly enthralled by the superstar. Even through jaundiced Irish eyes, it was hard not to conclude the officials were subconsciously but actively searching for any means to deliver to this game a story book finish.
Kenny had already watched Ronaldo’s moment before he sat down.
“I don’t know of anyone else who could have scored that. It’s just an incredible header.”
You could hear in his voice the football man’s admiration for the technique and poise and the choked regret that it had to come on his watch. But the 90 (five-plus) minutes confirmed that Kenny is, if nothing else, one of the bravest performers in Irish sport.
Radical
Strange as it seems, this evening’s match against Azerbaijan, the fourth match in a World Cup qualifying campaign that is already dead in the water, is a hugely significant game for Ireland. Kenny’s last World Cup home game in Dublin ended in a humiliating 0-1 defeat to Luxembourg. The sideline must have been a terribly lonely place for Kenny that night.
Kenny came into the Ireland job with a radical agenda. From the beginning he has been trying to impose his faith in Irish football not so much on his squad – it’s clear they already believe in him – but on the nation. He’s trying to buck a 30 year culture that began accidentally when a Scotsman, Gary McKay, scored a goal one smoky night in Sofia that indirectly sent Jack Charlton’s Ireland to the European championships of 1988.
The Republic of Ireland was a mature team then, containing several brilliant professionals. So they beat England, they drew with Russia, they were fearless against the gilded Dutch - this story is old - they might have won the bloody thing.
That fantasy fortnight started the national addiction to qualification, which reached its apotheosis in the summer of 1990 and had never gone away. And Charlton became the archetypal Irish manager: strong willed, individualistic; inoculated by previous achievement.
Figures like Charlton and Giovanni Trapattoni and Martin O’Neill (in the company of Roy Keane) gave, in addition to managerial acumen, the lustre of stardom to Ireland teams even in years when on-field star quality was comparatively low wattage. Prestige appointments from English and international football eased the natural insecurities of a small country with a semi-professional league.
As a grassroots manager with a brilliant under age record Brian Kerr attempted the desperately tricky high-wire act of sending out Ireland teams to both play football and attempt to qualify. He was ostracized by Irish football officialdom when his campaign narrowly failed.
Since Charlton, the primary duty of Ireland managers has been to Get There. The subtleties and pleasures of the journey to major tournaments always played second fiddle. The enjoyment of watching Ireland was irrelevant as long as managers could point to results.
That changed in Faro on Wednesday night. Ireland’s performance was thrilling, from beginning to end. To see a coltish team of kids struggle, initially and then grow and become lionhearted, really, as they edged into the game and under Portuguese skin was one thing.
But to see them then dare to try and play football against a team who didn’t disguise their sense of superiority was wonderful. As Kenny put it, Ireland’s players were “very brave in receiving the ball in tight areas all over the field.” They backed themselves, in other words, as footballers.
Arrogance
There was an unpleasant undercurrent of arrogance about Cristiano Ronaldo throughout the night; a near contempt for the stubbornness of his opponents. The denouement was, literally, fabulous but watching him celebrate himself, it was impossible to shake the feeling that there is something essentially shallow about Ronaldo's view of football and his place in the game; a suspicion that his interpretation of the tradition beyond his orbit is dismally narrow.
But he is, after everything, an electrifying entertainer. Maybe that energy transmitted to the Irish players and provoked them into a heightened show of defiance and daring. Maybe it was a chimera.
The one worry, of course, is that Ireland’s only goal came yet again from a set piece and yet again from a powerfully delivered headed goal by a defender. Kenny can send out a team designed to create chances but the actual scoring of goals is beyond his control.
The team is young. Gavin Bazunu this week asked the public to have faith in them. It seems reasonable. Wednesday night in Portugal was a clear vision that there is another future: that it doesn’t always have to be grinding nights of 0-0s and 1-0s and thwarting the opposition.
So it’s desperately, desperately important that this team continues in the same mood this evening against a modest nation and without the spine-tingling presence of an all-time predator moving about them.
Because for a little while, Cristiano Ronaldo looked rattled and bothered by the Irish football team. It was beautiful to see. There can be more to Ireland games than just getting there. And who wants to go to Qatar, anyway?
