IRELAND BOSS Stephen Kenny is hoping Troy Parrott will benefit long term from his impressive showing against Andorra on Thursday.
The Tottenham youngster was key to Ireland’s turnaround following a dire first-half performance.
After the Andorrans went ahead early in the second half, the 19-year-old took the game by the scruff of the neck, scoring two goals in three minutes to put the visitors ahead.
There has been considerable hype around the Dubliner for a long time, having impressed with Ireland at underage level.
There is a sense, however, that this season has been somewhat disappointing for Parrott. Amid loan spells at Millwall in the Championship and Ipswich in League One, he registered two goals from 32 appearances.
Yet Kenny believes the player can take confidence from his display last week.
“There was a lot of speculation that he hadn’t merited or done enough to be in the squad because he’s not had the season he would have liked to have, although he did have a lot of football throughout the season playing in different positions,” Kenny told a press conference today.
“There was a possibility of leaving him with the U21s for the tournament in Spain, but I do think our younger players coming through — even though they still have a lot to prove, there’s no doubt — in terms of our attacking players, they are the players with the greatest potential and the players that can help us really improve as a team and give us a cutting edge in our play.
“Sometimes when young players are having a difficult time, to have the capacity to stand up and score two goals in an international game can really help your confidence and I am hoping that will really remind him of his talent and remind him he is a quality player and he is capable of scoring goals and it’s something where we have to maximise his talent. That’s why our job is to nurture the talent and maximise it and get players to achieve their potential and he’s one we want to see do that.”
Kenny singled out Parrott, as well as Daryl Horgan and Jason Knight for their performances against Andorra, and he is hoping for more to come against Hungary on Tuesday.
“We’d like a really positive performance against Hungary. They rested eight players in the game midweek [against Cyprus] and certainly they’ll be at full strength. You’d imagine they will have the team that will play in the Euros for them. That’s great, we are looking forward to that, it will be a good test for our players.
“Are we making changes [from the Andorra game]? Yeah. We’re not in a position to make wholesale changes because we want a degree of continuity, but there will be some changes alright in the team.”
Hungary are one of the sides set to compete at the Euros, while Ireland’s World Cup qualification rivals Portugal will also be involved.
Kenny is unsure yet whether he will be able to attend any games at the tournament in person, but he will regardless be keeping a close eye on proceedings.
“Of course everyone is hurt to lose that game [against Slovakia] and not be a part of it but there’s lots of things we can learn from the Euros and I can learn from the Euros, watching the trends in international football, they are constantly changing.”
Asked to reflect on his reign as Ireland manager so far, with the season set to come to a close for his players, Kenny added: “I would have wanted to do better than I have overall. There’s no doubt. I wouldn’t try to paint a different picture. I think there’s a clear vision of the team we want to create. I want the team to have a clear identity. We have 13 players that made their senior competitive international debut in that period. That’s quite a radical shift and we are creating a stronger squad going forward for the three-game windows — a team that the supporters can identify with.
“Yeah, some of the teenagers didn’t progress as quickly with their clubs due to injuries and other reasons, but we have a degree of exciting attacking talent and some players really emerging all the time. Some players could have good club seasons [next year] and really put themselves in the frame. Some players who we have brought into this camp have really emerged.
“We’ll want to finish the week strongly and take that into the September window because we have nine points to play for — Portugal, Azerbaijan and Serbia, tough matches. We want to have a strong September and we want this week to help us to do that and give us the platform to do that.”
Originally published at 13.58