Stephen Kenny

[ontheotherhand]

We’ve qualified for three tournaments since the 94WC, all by way of playoff. If we say we were third seed ranks throughout this time, qualifying three times during a 30-year span is a law of averages expected return. And for the most part, we have played tepid, uninspiring football. Sure, we had the odd morale victory to give the illusion of being “competitive”. But I can’t help feeling that are current inability to produce creative players is the legacy of our senior team being set up to not lose, rather than set up to win games. Maybe Kenny’s time is up, but we frankly need a Stephen Kenny to replace him. Otherwise, it another 30 odd years of hoping for a favourable qualification draw and another couple of hundred of pages on the potential eligible players thread looking to unearth a short-term fix for a long-term problem.

Definitely part of the problem. We don't have a plan for producing players at all though really. We have a jumble of interested and mostly well intentioned parties all playing a slightly different game. We won't be competitive until the national team is a product of a national plan that goes deeper than the senior team's style of play. Maybe I'm overly pessimistic.

My hope was that Kenny could help spearhead some of the necessary progress but that's pretty naive of me as it's up to the FAI to get the work done. 30 years might just do the trick.

[Stuttgart88]

Some of the debate is confusing though. Didi Hamman saying academies are overcoaching kids and there aren’t enough street footballers anymore (echoes of Giles / Kerr here), yet most of the better players around these days are academy products, no?

I do remember Crafty telling me he had spoken to a UK scout about Conor Clifford and he said “typical academy player. Lovely technique but can’t win a header in midfield which is why his team is losing”.

Anyone like elatedscum got a view here? Do academies make some great players but sterilise others?

[ontheotherhand]

Just put a street through all of our academies! Simples. The great thing is, they are all green field sites......

[Jd2793]

Some of the debate is confusing though. Didi Hamman saying academies are overcoaching kids and there aren’t enough street footballers anymore (echoes of Giles / Kerr here), yet most of the better players around these days are academy products, no?

I do remember Crafty telling me he had spoken to a UK scout about Conor Clifford and he said “typical academy player. Lovely technique but can’t win a header in midfield which is why his team is losing”.



Anyone like elatedscum got a view here? Do academies make some great players but sterilise others?

i think its nonsense for the most part. what didi wants it one star player playing off the cuff completely in a throwback 90s kinda way. football has evolved so much tactically that it rarely happens anymore tbh. we've never had a higher quality of player IMO. academies have done a great job all in all of improving the game. there will obviously be instances where coaches get annoyed at the younger ones who play for themselves instead of the team , which i suppose could be stifling them. the way i see it the "Street footballer" is pretty much dead, whether it be down to how society has changed ( phones xbox ps5 etc) or coaches tactics. i think grealish is a great example of a throwback flair player who carried a weak team then moved to the best team just to be a cog in the wheel. hes no less of a player hes just being asked to do a different job.

[weldoninhio]

Some of the debate is confusing though. Didi Hamman saying academies are overcoaching kids and there aren’t enough street footballers anymore (echoes of Giles / Kerr here), yet most of the better players around these days are academy products, no?

I do remember Crafty telling me he had spoken to a UK scout about Conor Clifford and he said “typical academy player. Lovely technique but can’t win a header in midfield which is why his team is losing”.

Anyone like elatedscum got a view here? Do academies make some great players but sterilise others?

Academies train the footballer out of kids and make then percentage passing automatons.

[ontheotherhand]

i think its nonsense for the most part. what didi wants it one star player playing off the cuff completely in a throwback 90s kinda way. football has evolved so much tactically that it rarely happens anymore tbh. we've never had a higher quality of player IMO. academies have done a great job all in all of improving the game. there will obviously be instances where coaches get annoyed at the younger ones who play for themselves instead of the team , which i suppose could be stifling them. the way i see it the "Street footballer" is pretty much dead, whether it be down to how society has changed ( phones xbox ps5 etc) or coaches tactics. i think grealish is a great example of a throwback flair player who carried a weak team then moved to the best team just to be a cog in the wheel. hes no less of a player hes just being asked to do a different job.

I'd agree with most of that. I think there are still plenty of "street footballers" around but tactics, defending and fitness have all come a long way from the days Maradona could slalom his way through a series of wild lunges from the best defenders in the world who were probably on the **** the night before the game. Domestically speaking you have Forrester, Burke and Byrne but even at LoI level they are up against defenders in very good condition who play within fairly rigid systems and don't dive in. Your point around coaches training the spontaneity out of players is probably very true. Damien Duff's transformation from flair winger at Blackburn to dogged wing back at Chelsea springs to mind and that was late in his career so the impact on academy players is probably fairly profound.

[Stuttgart88]

I’d say France, Germany, Belgium, England, Brazil and Argentina would be above the rest of the world.

The very top tier. Portugal would be a rung below them.

In fairness, I wouldn't be too confident of Portugal beating Switzerland. The Swiss are a good tournament team and have won their last two qualifying groups, ahead of Italy and Denmark. Definitely not a tier 1 side, but right at the top of the tier 2 / pot 2 sides.

[Stuttgart88]

Academies train the footballer out of kids and make then percentage passing automatons.

This feels right to me but at same time some of the world's best / most creative players are academy products. England's current crop all are. Hansi Flick was saying Musiala is only good because he was developed in England. I suspect academies are developing better technical footballers across the board but probably overcoaching several flair players and some players are standing out among others despite this rather than because of it.

[Eirambler]

Academies are generally set up at the highest level with a view to producing one player every three or four years who can make the first team at that club and a few others with a sell on value that can go to other Premier League clubs, to the Championship or somewhere like the Bundesliga. So the whole setup is geared around achieving those outcomes, which most of these academies achieve reasonably successfully, but at the cost that the (many) other young players in these academies tend to get swallowed up by this process. Just because the academy is doing what's best for those few standout players doesn't mean it's doing what's best for the others, whose ceiling might be League 1 or the Championship - or even the Premier League later in their careers if they were developed to their full potential.

So the system probably suits a national team like England rather than us. They're always likely to have a standout player or two at each major academy, among the many other weaker English players there also, who are of no relevance to their senior national team. Whereas our lads will only rarely if ever be the standout player, often we'll have players there that the system doesn't really work best for.

For that reason the loan system is crucial to our lads as a finishing school as they're unlikely to ever walk into a top 6 first team straight out of the youth setup. But if players are only going out on loan or permanent moves at 20 or 21 or later in some cases then they've already probably spend too much time in an academy setup that isn't set up to their advantage. Conor Masterson is probably a prime example of this.

So, while I do think we have a good crop of players coming through, we will probably have to wait longer to get the benefit of this with players having to go the long road to get them to the level we need. I think we're already seeing this happen with quite a few of them. Sometimes it won't be the ones we expect that will make it out the other end of this process and the ones that do make it will probably be further on in their careers than we would like them to be (e.g. Cullen and Egan).

So, while the academy system suits the clubs that run it, it's probably not the best from our perspective.

[BOOMSHAKALAKA]

Are our players any worse than the Australian squad? Looking at the clubs they play for, definitely not. It just goes to show what an organised, properly coached team can do. It's what we should be aiming for. Competing against top teams is not an impossible task that Kenny wants everyone to believe.

[gastric]

Are our players any worse than the Australian squad? Looking at the clubs they play for, definitely not. It just goes to show what an organised, properly coached team can do. It's what we should be aiming for. Competing against top teams is not an impossible task that Kenny wants everyone to believe.

Organised, but they play crap football, I suppose the

same we are capable of. Would agree that we need to change coach after watching this World Cup.

[Diggs246]

Organised, but they play crap football, I suppose the

same we are capable of. Would agree that we need to change coach after watching this World Cup.

I didn't think it was crap at all
Entertaining actually.

[gastric]

I didn't think it was crap at all
Entertaining actually.

Each to their own taste, but sitting back and defending for most of the game does not entertain me.

[SkStu]

Are our players any worse than the Australian squad? Looking at the clubs they play for, definitely not. It just goes to show what an organised, properly coached team can do. It's what we should be aiming for. Competing against top teams is not an impossible task that Kenny wants everyone to believe.

We tend to compete fairly well against the top teams under Kenny, albeit draws mostly and plucky defeats. His biggest problem is not being effective enough at all against the lower teams. That’s where the more embarrassing results and/or performances have been.

[Diggs246]

We tend to compete fairly well against the top teams under Kenny, albeit draws mostly and plucky defeats. His biggest problem is not being effective enough at all against the lower teams. That’s where the more embarrassing results and/or performances have been.

We got 2 points out of 12 ( Portugal and serbia) we probably deserved a point away to Portugal but we stole a point off serbia at home.

[SkStu]

Yeah, points wise not great. A couple draws and a couple plucky defeats. Would you give him the Belgium result there to help me out a bit?

[BOOMSHAKALAKA]

We tend to compete fairly well against the top teams under Kenny, albeit draws mostly and plucky defeats. His biggest problem is not being effective enough at all against the lower teams. That’s where the more embarrassing results and/or performances have been.

The only top teams we've played in competitive games have been Portugal and Serbia. In 3 of those games we were well beaten and lucky that wasn't reflected on the score board. We've only had 1 win against a team that some would describe as decent opposition in 30 games under Kenny. That was against Scotland who are no great shakes.

My point here is that people are talking about not having the players and needing to improve player development, obviously that is true but it's not the job for the senior manager. He has to get the best out of what he has. Blaming failure on the players seems like a very flimsy excuse when you look at some of the teams at this world cup.

We shouldn't accept the thinking that we can't compete with Portugal and Serbia like Kenny has told us. Looking at teams like Australia, Japan, South Korea etc should give us hope. It's possible to compete at the highest level even if you don't have outstanding players.

[Diggs246]

Yeah, points wise not great. A couple draws and a couple plucky defeats. Would you give him the Belgium result there to help me out a bit?

Actually what I will say is Portugal at home was a v good performance and obviously Scotland too. But he has had years and overall he has been very very poor. I honestly think he is worse then stan.
Whats fascinating is the straw that broke the camels back was his substitutes v Norway and Malta, thats seems to be when his own supporters turned on him. Bringing on Jeff was ridiculous but taking off obefemi v Scotland away was a far more serious indictment of his ability.

[Stuttgart88]

Lost 4-1 to France. Does that give Kenny a free pass in March? Plucky defeat - helped by a fluke of a goal - to an Argentina side that should have been out of sight.

P4, L2, W1, D1.

I get the general point and agree that there’s evidence of good coaching, organisation and no little amount of hunger and hard work, and that can count for a lot, but that’s been evident in several of our games against better teams. It’s also been absent in our worst performances.

For us though it’s a results business when we’re playing well but not getting results, someone else’s work when we are, lucky when we get an OG after a really ballsy comeback, bad management when we play well but Parrott misses a sitter…

I actually think we’ve better players than Australia more or less across the board. I’d like to see how Australia would do in a League B NL campaign, or a Euro qualifying campaign. I’d guess not much better than us, if at all.

I think Rob Page has been impressive in his spell as Welsh coach yet they stank the place out. And if they were to play Australia tomorrow I wouldn’t bet much on Australia winning.

There’s almost always an Iceland or an Australia we can point to.

But if the point is that spirit, organisation and sound tactics are a necessary but insufficient condition for success then yes, of course I agree.

[BOOMSHAKALAKA]

Lost 4-1 to France. Does that give Kenny a free pass in March? Plucky defeat - helped by a fluke of a goal - to an Argentina side that should have been out of sight.

P4, L2, W1, D1.

I get the general point and agree that there’s evidence of good coaching, organisation and no little amount of hunger and hard work, and that can count for a lot, but that’s been evident in several of our games against better teams. It’s also been absent in our worst performances.

For us though it’s a results business when we’re playing well but not getting results, someone else’s work when we are, lucky when we get an OG after a really ballsy comeback, bad management when we play well but Parrott misses a sitter…

I actually think we’ve better players than Australia more or less across the board. I’d like to see how Australia would do in a League B NL campaign, or a Euro qualifying campaign. I’d guess not much better than us, if at all.

I think Rob Page has been impressive in his spell as Welsh coach yet they stank the place out. And if they were to play Australia tomorrow I wouldn’t bet much on Australia winning.

There’s almost always an Iceland or an Australia we can point to.

But if the point is that spirit, organisation and sound tactics are a necessary but insufficient condition for success then yes, of course I agree.

I'm not sure if I get your point. You're jumping all over the place. Australia beat Denmark and Tunisia? I was just looking at their squad with players for Hearts, Stoke etc, no one playing in a top league but they went and definitely didn't embarrass themselves on the world stage. We struggle to finish above Armenia, Azerbaijan and Luxembourg and all we hear is that our players are useless.

Is our squad much weaker than Japan's or South Korea's? These are all teams competing with the top ranked sides. No excuses are being thrown out by their team managers. We're not even coming close in groups with the top teams but our manager gets a free pass. It just doesn't wash. Either does blaming players for missed chances after 2 years and 30 games.

Our players being used as a scapegoat was something criticised hugely when Trappatoni and O Neill used it. Kenny shouldn't be above such criticism, especially viewing some of the squads performing well at this world cup. Kenny can't even get us close to qualification!