“I’d had a good relationship with him”
The grading of Stephen Kenny’s reign as Ireland manager is up for debate. Was his style unsuited to international football, or was he just a victim of one of the weakest squads in the country’s history?
While his Ireland side were able to pull out some top performances against the likes of France and Portugal, with a 3-0 win over Scotland in 2022 a highpoint, losses to minnows Luxembourg and Armenia were a massive black mark on his tenure.
Kenny took charge of Ireland U21s in 2018. At the same time, Mick McCarthy replaced Martin O’Neill as senior-team boss, with the plan for Kenny to take over from McCarthy in 2020.
Current St Pat’s boss Kenny was highly thought of after his exploits with Dundalk in both the League of Ireland and Europe, while he enjoyed success with the U21s.
Kenny promised to continue his expansive style of play with Ireland, saying: “Do I think that I could take charge of the next generation of Irish players and turn them into a really cohesive team, combining the best virtues of Irish sides – the honesty, work-rate and passion that we’ve shown down the years – but introducing a more European style of play, a more fluid and expansive way? Yes, I do.”
While Martin O’Neill had brought Ireland its greatest success since the 2002 World Cup – when he qualified Ireland for Euro 2016 before narrowly losing to France round of 16 – the end of his tenure saw Ireland’s play become stale and unsuccessful.
Clearly the former Celtic gaffer took offence to Kenny’s big talk of changing Ireland’s style, and he was more than ready to criticise when things went awry for the new boss.
O’Neill was adamant that international football was about results rather than building for the future, and said that Kenny had “underestimated” the difficulty of managing a country.
Speaking on the Second Captains podcast, Kenny spoke of his previously good relationship with O’Neill, but admitted that he did “seem to take satisfaction” in his downfall.
Kenny said: “I had a relationship with him from then, good relationship, but obviously there had been a bit of sniping alright. I’m not going to get into that really, whatever.
“I’d had a good relationship with him, even when he got the job, I’d been in touch with him because he came to some of the (Dundalk) games in the Europa League and so forth. So my relationship with Martin was fine, but obviously he did seem to take some satisfaction in just not succeeding.
“But that’s alright.”
