Soccer

Ken Early: Ireland’s woes must end in Greece

It is time for Stephen Kenny’s team to deliver: that does not necessarily mean winning in Athens, but it does entail playing well and not losing

Ireland's players train at the new Opap Arena, where they will take on Greece on Friday night. Photograph: Ryan Byrne/Inpho
Ireland's players train at the new Opap Arena, where they will take on Greece on Friday night. Photograph: Ryan Byrne/Inpho
Ken Early's picture
Ken Early in Athens
Thu Jun 15 2023 - 23:30

Onward, ever onward ploughs the 2022-23 season. It’s the June 16th and, thanks to the knock-on effects of the Qatar World Cup, Ireland are just beginning their summer Euro 2024 qualifying programme. To put that in perspective, June 16th was the date that Ireland’s World Cup campaign ended in 2002, after four finals matches in Japan and South Korea.

The match against Gibraltar next Monday, June 19th, will be the latest postseason qualifier Ireland have ever played. By June 19th, Ireland had already returned home from both Euro 88 and Euro 2012.

The demands on the players are becoming absurd. Most Championship clubs expect their players to report for preseason training in the last week of June, a week after the summer internationals conclude. Burnley, the club of Josh Cullen and Michael Obafemi, actually returned for initial preseason training 11 days ago.

The Greeks, at least, seem fed up with it. Friday’s clash will be the first competitive match for the national team at the Opap Arena, the new home of AEK Athens, a 32,500-seater whose sand-coloured, turreted exterior is built to resemble the walls of Constantinople. Yet, even factoring in nearly 3,000 travelling Irish fans, the hosts expect the stadium to be less than half full.

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A Greek journalist at the stadium on Thursday explained: “It’s not so hot for the national team here. Panathinaikos yes, national team no. I expect 10,000 maybe, 20,000 would be amazing. It’s Friday night. You can go to see Greece and Ireland. Where’s the football?”

It was put to Greece coach Gus Poyet that the new stadium should give his team a big boost. “If it’s full,” Poyet replied.

According to Poyet, the bond between the Greek team and fans has been damaged by the team’s repeated failures to qualify for tournaments since 2014. “To have it full, we need to qualify.”

Poyet’s “if we build it, they will come” attitude contrasted with Kenny’s frequent statements that the Ireland fans are excited by the fact that building or rebuilding is under way. Here again he spoke of the great “affinity” the fans have with the team, an affinity which continues to thrive despite being starved of results and points on the board.

The question for Kenny is whether, after three years of groundwork and building, the same can be said for the fans’ affinity with the manager.

When Poyet was asked if either team could lose Friday’s match and still hope to qualify, he laughed and said: “It would be very difficult.”

Kenny, as ever, took a more optimistic line. “It’s only the second game in the group, I don’t think anything is decided so early.” Has he already forgotten what happened in our last qualifying group? Losing the opening two matches against Serbia and Luxembourg meant that Ireland’s Qatar campaign blew up on the launch pad. Follow the home defeat against France with another defeat tonight and Ireland effectively become one of the first sides to be knocked out of Euro 2024.

The worst that could happen for Kenny is that Ireland give a repeat of the awful performance they delivered last June against Armenia, which ended Kenny’s declared ambition of winning the Nations League division after one game.

The training camp in Antalya was specifically designed to tune the players up and avoid a repeat of that. Having invested so heavily in the preparation, the FAI will expect Kenny’s team to deliver.

Delivering does not (yet) mean winning: a team like Ireland, with our recent years of failure, can’t feel entitled to win in a place like Athens. Tonight, it means playing well and it means not losing.

Playing well and losing is getting boring. “You can see the team is getting better,” Kenny said at the stadium on Thursday. “That was evident in our previous game against France. That was a strong performance in that game.”

The very next question was about why, despite some promising performances, Ireland haven’t been able to seal the deal against stronger opposition in his previous away matches.

“The past is the past, you can’t look back,” Kenny said. Except, it appears, when it suits you to do so.

Kenny has spent nearly three years assembling a new team, hyping up their quality, their style, their connection with the people, etc. The problem is that if this team really is as exciting as he says it is, but he still can’t get results, then the FAI will think it’s time to start looking for someone who can.

[ Ken Early: Football may be many things to many people, but it’s not escapism ]

As he said himself, discussing whether he would be likely to pick James McClean in order to help him get closer to his 100th cap: “One thing you learn as a manager is that there’s very little sentiment. You can’t let sentiment enter your decision-making process.”