THE UEFA NATIONS League: the eternal middle child of international football.
It continues to be derided by the sport’s famous figures, with Kevin de Bruyne aligning himself with sceptic-in-chief Jurgen Klopp by describing it as “unimportant” and a collection of “glorified friendlies.”
Their view of the competition is refracted through their own self-interest, and a quadruple-header of games at the end of their brutal seasons is, admittedly, a tough sell. But the competition means more the lower down the food chain you travel, and Stephen Kenny freighted it with significance for Ireland when he declared last October that his ambition is to win the group. That was before the draw was made, and pairings with Ukraine, Scotland, and Armenia have not brought any revisionism on Kenny’s part.
It is thick with incentives: win the group and Ireland will be second seeds in the Euro 2024 qualifier draw later this year, while securing a back-door playoff to the Euros should the campaign go awry. It would also bring promotion to the top tier, against opponents who would send the tills ringing at the FAI.
Ireland have befouled the competition to date, with zero wins and two goals scored in ten games across two campaigns. Only Iceland, Northern Ireland, Andorra, San Marino have also failed to win a game in the Nations League so far, while of the 55 competing nations, only San Marino have scored fewer goals than Ireland. The first campaign was staged under the pall of Martin O’Neill’s acrimonious, dessicated end days, while the results in the second campaign were mitigated against by the absurd circumstances of the pandemic.
“It’s not fair to assess that campaign at all. Completely unfair”, said Kenny, citing his run of bad luck.
Kenny is aiming for more consistency of selection this time around, and most of his team now picks itself. Bazunu, Coleman, Duffy, Egan, Cullen, Hendrick, Robinson and Ogbene are all automatic starters, with the left wing-back a coin toss between Enda Stevens and James McClean. Matt Doherty’s injury means Coleman will likely be pushed to right wing-back, opening up a place in the back three for Nathan Collins. Given the onus is on Ireland to attack, Troy Parrott will likely be preferred to a midfield player like Alan Browne or Jason Knight further forward.
(Bazunu has been nursing a back problem but Kenny said he expects him to be available today. Caoimhín Kelleher will replace him if he’s deemed unfit.)
Consistency in selection means foregoing the element of surprise, and it will be interesting to see how Ireland deal with not only being favourites, but also counteracting an opponent with a clearer prior blueprint of how they play. But if Ireland are to fulfill their manager’s ambition, they need to win away to the group’s bottom seeds.
There was a theme of double-bookings to Ireland’s build-up: coach John Eustace linked up late with the squad as he got married on Tuesday, while Josh Cullen’s supposed suspension vanished when it was discovered that Fifa mistook his two yellows in separate games against Luxembourg for two cards in the away game in November.
The heat has been the week’s other character. Kick-off is at 5pm local time, when temperatures are forecast to hit 35 degrees. “We’ll know that we’ll have to adapt aspects of our play”, said Kenny. “We don’t want to make it too much of a contentious issue.”
Contention hangs heavy in the Yerevan air. The city has roiled with street protests that have occasionally turned ugly in recent weeks, in response to opposition politician’s calls to topple Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan. Critics have accused him of conceding too much in peace negotiations with Azerbaijan after a ceasefire in the conflict over the contested Nagorno-Karabakh region. That ceasefire agreement was guaranteed by Russia, who have sent 2,000 peacekeeping troops into the region. The resulting national attitude to Russia was encapsulated by the top story on the Armenian state news agency’s website on Wednesday: a happy birthday message to Pashinyan, sent by Vladimir Putin.
Thousands of Armenians gathered yesterday evening in Republic Square in the city centre, with riot police corralled around the entrances to various government buildings, some of which were broken into during protests last month. They then marched through the city’s streets, hemmed away from the footpaths by lines of police officers.
The crowd at the Republic Stadium tonight will likely exceed the rally’s attendance, however, with roughly 9,000 expected in the 14,500-capacity ground. Tickets are on sale outside the ground for the equivalent of a euro, though Armenia are not exactly surfing into this game on a wave of optimism. Star player Henrikh Mkhitaryan retired in March, a month in which Armenia also contrived to lose 9-0 to Norway.
“Don’t remind me of it”, said the Armenian manager when he was reminded of it yesterday.
This is Ireland’s first meeting with Armenia since qualifying for Euro 2012, when a 2-1 win for Ireland edged a winner-takes-a-play-off clash in Dublin. The game lives in infamy in Armenia because of the red card shown to goalkeeper Roman Berezovsky in the first half. Rushing out of his penalty area to block a shot by Simon Cox, the goalkeeper raised his hands but the ball bounced off his ribcage, which the referee mistook. Armenia filed a complaint to Uefa that went nowhere, and yesterday they gave the impression they have been polishing the grievance ever since. The first questions the local press had for Kenny and Seamus Coleman were to ask for their recollections of this Henryesque scandal that mars the history of Armenian football.
“We are very motivated for tomorrow’s game”, said Armenian captain Varazdat Haroyan. “All the players and Armenians remember the game in 2011.”
The injustice is heightened by the fact that was the closest Armenia’s best side ever came to qualification. They are not the same team nowadays, 92nd in the world whereas once they were within the top 40. Mkhitaryan’s retirement removes their one widely-recognised name, but Kenny name-checked their forward players, Sargis Adamyan of Club Brugge and Tigran Barseghyan of Slovan Bratislava, along with young midfielder Eduard Spertsyan.
This is the first of four games in 11 days, a schedule which the Armenian manager called “barbaric.” It is an exhausting itinerary, and it would be more tiring still if Ireland don’t win and find themselves playing catch-up from the off.
But given the progress of the team ever since the last Nations League campaign ended, it’s reasonable to expect that Ireland’s cold embrace of this competition should melt away in the Yerevan heat.
Republic of Ireland (Probable XI): Bazunu; Coleman; Collins, Duffy, Egan; Stevens; Cullen, Hendrick; Parrott, Ogbene; Robinson
Armenia (Probable XI): Yurchenko; Voskanyan, Haroyan, Hambardzumyan, Kama; Udo, Spertsyan, Bayramyan, Bichakhchyan; Adamyan, Barseghyan
ON TV: RTE Two; KO 2pm
