GLACIERS MELT, DYNASTIES fall, but the FAI have not yet appointed a successor to Stephen Kenny.
This is not yet the FAI’s longest-ever recruitment process: its sin in the eyes of the public is not its length but in its lack of inspiration.
Ordinarily there is nothing the country loves more than a good old Managerial Chase, given the FAI have historically turned it into a heady blend of fantasy and farce.
The Managerial Chase has previously allowed us to holiday from all reason, providing us with the opportunity to dream big and imagine ourselves as a major player on the international scene.
This was made possible by the former regime’s decision to find private backing to shovel relatively absurd amounts of money to the manager, and it all coalesced into a mass outbreak of Notions.
Things once got to the point that the FAI talked up the prospect of tempting Alex Ferguson from Manchester United to replace Brian Kerr. This is the kind of Celtic Tiger thinking that led to people installing saunas under their stairs.
But such was the money on offer, the general public could plausibly pluck a handful of famous names and argue why they would be right for the Irish job.
This is the now stuff of long-lost innocence: it was a potemkin operation. The money dished out to Giovanni Trapattoni, Marco Tardelli, Martin O’Neill, and Roy Keane was wildly out of kilter with Irish football’s actual value. It was like QPR signing Kylian Mbappe.
It didn’t take an eagle eye to know these problems at the time, of course, given the manager’s salary was many multiples of the prize money offer for winning the League of Ireland. But sadly the awesome power of the blind eye proved greater. It would be disingenuous for the media not to acknowledge their complicity in this, too.
Everyone’s eyes have been widened now. Football-wise, we have the structures and facilities of a European minnow, and for once a Managerial Chase is reminding us of this fact rather than being an exercise in ignoring it.
Our cold reality is slowly intruding on us all.
There is something of the last-Japanese-soldier-in-the-jungle to the few Irish fans righteously bridling at the prospect of Sam Allardyce, given Sam Allardyce wouldn’t get out of bed for what the FAI would pay him.
The Irish job is just not as appealing as we like to think it is. The salary is barely competitive with a mid-tier club in England’s second division; the team is at a low ebb, light on experienced leadership and seriously deficient in midfield; the year’s run of fixtures is brutal; and the fiasco over the CEO’s pay last year shows there remains the possibility a coach’s reputation could be tainted by association.
Very few up-and-coming head coaches want to work in international football nowadays, and fewer still would want to work for the FAI.
Those we appear to want, don’t want us: the Lee Carsley courtship seems to have failed, Damien Duff has left the FAI on read.
At the same time, we don’t want those who want us. Neil Lennon has been creditably open and honest with his intentions, and was met by a lukewarm response. Chris Coleman’s candidacy was met with such hostility that his son went all Sonny Corleone on a few Irish objectors online.
The names about which fans seem to be most excited about are the likes of Carsley, Anthony Barry and John O’Shea, because of the (relative) thrill of the unknown. Anthony Hudson now has a bank of supporters who have been following the arc of his career for almost four days.
Lennon and Coleman were spoken to but were not among the top candidates, but naturally, in a news vacuum, the emergence of any name is parlayed into the status of unbackable favourite.
It made little sense for the FAI to appoint either Coleman or Lennon, given their own job description. They want a pretty hands-on head coach who is happy to be based at least part-time in Ireland and believes in inculcating a progressive style of play that can be replicated in all underage Irish sides.
At which point you realise the best fit for the role is Stephen Kenny.
But Kenny is gone because he lost too many games, so really the profile is A Stephen Kenny-Type Who Can Beat Greece.
Shortly after Kenny’s exit was confirmed, a non-FAI source in the game told this column that the profile of candidate the FAI were looking for would be a Gareth Ainsworth-type. (Though, critically, not Gareth Ainsworth as he was in a job at the time.) That prototype doesn’t really scan in terms of Ainsworth’s style of play, but given he has eddied between the top of League One and the bottom of the Championship, he would be affordable.
If the FAI do stick by their job spec, it’s likely they will alight on someone of meagre global standing. And maybe that’s what we should have been doing all along.
This new FAI regime have been admirably open in acknowledging Irish football’s abundant problems. Their infrastructure report didn’t shirk the state of the country’s football facilities, while in his football pathways plan, Marc Canham openly states football is not maximising its potential. Such a comment would have been treasonous in an earlier era.
But Dylan Moran tells us that you should never examine your potential, because it’s like your bank balance: it’s never as great as you think it is.
This edition of the Managerial Chase has been a probe of our tragically diminished status, but we might one day benefit from its collective recognition. The delusion of the old ways were costly in every which way.
