THERE IS often a patronising tone in the way Stephen Kenny’s detractors speak about his Ireland team.
It’s usually something along the lines of ‘it’s all well and good playing pretty football but results are all I care about’.
The inference is usually that Kenny somehow prioritises the style in which his team plays over the necessity to win football matches.
But that mentality highlights part of the reason why Irish football has been in a less than healthy place for substantial portions of the past two decades.
The implication is that it’s either/or — playing attractive football or achieving success (if you consider qualifying for two major tournaments in 18 years pre-Kenny to be a success).
There is of course no doubt that Ireland’s style of play has developed under the Tallaght native — there is far more emphasis on positivity and playing out from the back. There is much more trust in the players than had been there previously.
Arguably not since the Eoin Hand era have Ireland been more focused on the technical side of the game, rather than the physical, route-one approach implemented by Jack Charlton and replicated to a degree with diminishing returns by every subsequent Irish manager before Kenny.
But the tone of some of the commentary and criticism in relation to Kenny unfairly intimates he is some sort of naive idealist, too romantic and in love with beautiful football to succeed at the top level.
Ireland might have ultimately lost, but last night was still a strong counter-argument to that misguided perception.
You don’t get to the level Kenny has reached by being someone who is purely interested in the aesthetics of the beautiful game, at the expense of everything else.
You don’t win multiple league titles and guide an Irish club to unprecedented heights in Europe without having more to your management style than an ability to inspire pretty football.
And you don’t take the best side in Europe to the brink if you are out of your depth at international level.
Football, as Kenny’s critics often point out, is a results business, but context is required also.
Last night, Kylian Mbappe, the best striker in the world (arguably with the exception of Erling Haaland) did very little of note. Similarly, Olivier Giroud, the country’s all-time record goalscorer, was anonymous for the most part.
That was not down to pretty football, but rather a combination of an astute gameplan, a well-organised team, and highly motivated players who were willing to “go to war” for their manager, as Nathan Collins put it last week.
Stopping Mbappe is easier said than done. It is a challenge that Ronald Koeman, an ex-Ajax and Barcelona manager, failed miserably at only days ago as the Dutch were decimated by Didier Deschamps’ men, while many even more highly regarded coaches have come badly unstuck when up against the PSG superstar.
For Mbappe to have such an ineffectual game for France is virtually unheard of, as the below stat from Andrew Cunneen highlights.
In Kylian Mbappe's last 61 games for club and country in which he's played 45+ minutes, the only two sides to have stopped him from having a shot on target were England in December and Ireland tonight.
— Andrew Cunneen (@Cunneen92) March 27, 2023
Moreover, not many people would have expected a Rotherham attacker to win the man-of-the-match award and give an AC Milan defender such a torrid time, but the former Dundalk boss was clever enough to spot the potential for Chiedozie Ogbene to cause serious problems down France’s left for Theo Hernandez, widely regarded as one the world’s full-backs.
So yes, Kenny has made Ireland more attractive to watch and ambitious in their play. But attributes such as grit, work ethic, tactical nous, and defensive solidity are hardly absent as last night’s performance underlined. Whereas some skeptics talk about Kenny’s sides as if they are the reincarnation of Ossie Ardiles’ ultra-attack-minded and largely unsuccessful Spurs team of 1990s.
Ireland’s game has evolved without sacrificing the basic tenets of a winning formula, yet the anti-Kenny camp still insist on seeing that strategy as conducive to failure.
Last night was all about fine margins. Ireland could so easily have drawn or potentially even beaten a side who were a penalty shootout away from winning the World Cup, if Mike Maignan had not pulled off a last-gasp wonder save to stop Nathan Collins’ header, or had Josh Cullen’s pass in the lead up to Benjamin Pavard’s fantastic strike been slightly more accurate.
Even in the recent past, the Boys in Green have got better results while playing worse against the top sides. Yet for 95% of Monday’s game, they looked relatively comfortable. It was a stark contrast with, for example, the home Serbia World Cup qualifier under Kenny where Gavin Bazunu had to pull off a string of superb saves to earn a 1-1 draw.
Ultimately, there was a pragmatism about Ireland last night that so nearly led to a fantastic result, a characteristic that has been a recurring feature of Kenny’s career, but one that does not fit the simplistic narrative that has dominated discussion of his Ireland tenure.
