YOU MIGHT HAVE thought it was over, but it’s not quite over yet. Not officially.
There is a mathematical chance Ireland can still finish among the top two in Group B, and so they will fight on. That chance is slight. Ireland would have to win their final three games against Greece, Gibraltar, and Netherlands, while hoping Greece beat the Dutch and that France beat both Greece and the Dutch. At that point it would come to goal difference.
Is it likely that all of these scenarios come together in glorious, staggering coalition for Ireland? Well, Permutations Bible WeGlobalFootball rate our qualification chances from the group at a concerning 0%, while the hopes of getting a Nations League play-off are at 2.12%.
But best to battle on just in case. When addressing it all, Stephen Kenny sounded a little like Slim Charles from The Wire, when he told his fellow Baltimore foot soldiers that “if it’s a lie, then we fight on the lie. But we gotta fight.” Motivation is an uncomplicated kind of thing when you’re working for an agreed, collective cause.
“Mathematically we still have a chance. As long as that is the case, we must give everything of ourselves all the time.”
Some effort has gone into motivating everybody else. Ticket sales as of yesterday afternoon are understood to have been in the region of 43,000, with Evan Ferguson declaring himself fit at a press conference boosting the game’s profile. The Irish coaching staff also appear to have tried to fashion some antipathy toward the Greeks, however earnestly or otherwise it is held in their hearts.
Keith Andrews set the tone on Tuesday when he obliquely referred to Gus Poyet’s cuteness in recruiting an Irish coach to give him the lowdown on Ireland before the June meeting in Athens. That initially sent the conspiratorial among us spinning headily into headlines about SpyGate, but the truth was more prosaic. Gary Dicker worked with Poyet at Brighton, and was in Athens as a fan for the Irish game and then invited in to see his old boss.
“Gary [Dicker] is one of the most intelligent players I had in my time at Brighton”, responded Poyet. He is proper Irish. Proper. And I promise you, this is one thing that is important, we talked more about how good Brighton play than the Republic of Ireland.
“Definitely Gary had nothing to do with that. He was in Greece, yes he was. He went to the game and the day he came to [Greek training] we done nothing to show him, in case he told the Republic of Ireland. Gary is a very honest man, he is a top bloke. It was a cheap accusation, very cheap.”
Stephen Kenny played that whole incident down with a very solid gag – “I have Theo Zagorakis out at the hotel in Castleknock” – but did backhand a compliment to the Greeks by calling them “streetwise.”
“We saw that with the sending off of Matt Doherty, which was never a sending off, in terms of players throwing themselves on the ground to get him sent off, we saw players lying down in the game, six or seven players, taking minutes out of the game, we saw that in the game.”
Poyet was blindsided by this comment. “I am surprised, I didn’t read that part, only the Keith Andrews part”, he said. “Play the game. Be men.”
The beef is no bad thing, really, and it is one thing that has been pretty absent throughout Kenny’s reign. Anything worthy of a ‘gate’ suffix has been internal – Planegate, Videogate – and with no obvious external rival, a lot of the comment on the Irish manager has been the stuff of internecine squabbling. The only real tension that has emerged in Kenny’s time has been that between him and Luxembourg’s wind-up-merchant-in-chief Luc Holtz, who blithely ignored corrections from the outraged Irish media and continued to plainly state that yes, Ireland is part of Britain.
So Getting One Over the Greeks is one thing at stake tonight, but more important is for Ireland to atone for their sins in Athens, which, in context, was the worst night of the Kenny Era. Ireland’s preparation in their Antalya training camp was perfect, they had no injury withdrawals, and yet they were blown away in the first 20 minutes and were lucky to only lose 2-1.
Kenny has since admitted that this was the only game in which he didn’t see his ideas and coaching reflected in his team, and subsequently said his side were too impatient in trying to exploit the space behind left-back Kostas Tsimikas, which led to too many long balls and not enough control.
That must be addressed, as must the tactical walloping delivered by Poyet. In Athens, the wide forwards in his front trio went wider than Ireland expected, going right out to the touchline to pin Ireland’s wing backs, which meant the midfielders were left with murderous shuttle runs to try and shackle full-backs Tsimikas and George Baldock.
Ireland have played a back four a little more often since then – the second half against Gibraltar, and the final quarter at home to the Netherlands – but Kenny naturally kept shtum as to whether he would rip up the system from the start tonight. It appears likely that he’ll stick with a back three, with Shane Duffy back involved. Kenny’s sharpest public criticism of his team was the manner of how they conceded the second goal against Greece, and Duffy has been fast-tracked back into the side since then. John Egan’s out, so expect a Collins/Duffy/O’Shea trio. Matt Doherty will likely keep his place at right wing-back, but Festy Ebosele is now pushing him very hard. The left wing-back berth has been a rotating cast this campaign, and now it’s a shootout between Liam Scales and Ryan Manning.
Alan Browne, Jason Knight, and Josh Cullen will likely make up the midfield, with Cheidozie Ogbene the likeliest to support Evan Ferguson in attack. If Ireland are feeling more adventurous, Will Smallbone or Mikey Johnston could play instead of Knight, but Johnston is seriously short of match minutes since his recovery from injury.
Getting more from Ferguson is a must. While his flick-on set up Nathan Collins’ goal in Athens, that was his only touch in the Greek box all night. This, plainly, cannot continue. Kenny will continue in the job until the end of the campaign, and there appears to be little that he can do to sway the FAI’s opinion back in his favour for another contract extension. All he and Ireland can do is win their final three games of this brutally difficult group and have at the end something tangible at which to point and say that, yes, this is worth fighting for.
Ireland (Possible XI): Bazunu; Collins, Duffy, O’Shea; Doherty; Cullen, Knight, Browne; Scales; Ogbene, Ferguson
Greece (Possible XI) Vlachodimos; Rota, Koulierakis, Mavropanos, Tsimikas; Siopis, Kourbelis, Bakasetas; Masouras, Mantalos, Fountas
On TV: RTE Two; KO: 7.45pm
