AND SO 289 days after Stephen Kenny left the FAI, a new managerial era officially begins with a Nations League game at home to England.
Lee Carsley is in at least interim charge of England, despite the fact that a fair chunk of the last 289 days were spent speculating that he would actually be in charge of Ireland for this game.
But in the end it wasn’t Lee Carsley, and nor was it Roy Keane, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, Damien Duff, Stephen Bradley, Neil Lennon, Chris Coleman, Anthony Hudson, Anthony Barry, Gus Poyet, Willy Sagnol, or John O’Shea.
It was Heimir Hallgrímsson.
The FAI have said publicly and senior sources continue to insist privately that Hallgrímsson was their first choice for the role, and the only candidate to be offered the Irish head coach role. O’Shea aside, all of the above names were among 25 candidates initially contacted at the end of last year to establish their interest in being considered for the job. (Duff rejected an opportunity to discuss the job.)
The full story of the search process may emerge in time, but we at last have its outcome.
The most famous moment of Hallgrímsson’s managerial career came when he was in joint charge of his native Iceland with Lars Lagerback, knocking England out of Euro 2016 on their way to the quarter-finals. Another win against England on Saturday would be an astonishing start to life with Ireland, but a truer test of his tenure will be Tuesday’s visit of Greece.
As part of the interview process, Hallgrímsson was shown footage from Ireland’s 2-1 loss away to Greece in Euro 2024 qualifying and asked how he would have reacted in that situation. Tuesday offers an instant opportunity to back up his words.
Hallgrímsson’s adaptability is one of the primary reasons he has been hired.
The defeat in Athens was ultimately ruinous for Kenny, especially given the squad had an injury-free run through a 10-day training camp in Antalya ahead of the game. Those influential in deciding whether Kenny’s contract would be renewed, including director of football Marc Canham, found fault with Ireland’s rigidity in Athens, and wondered why so much space was granted to the Greece full-backs, one of whom was Kostas Tsimikas of Liverpool. While Kenny substituted Adam Idah for Mikey Johnston at half-time in that game, the bulk of Ireland’s back three system remained in place.
The FAI have identified a few other areas in which Hallgrímsson can improve Ireland. As part of their recruitment process, the FAI employed a data company, Analytics FC, to study a wide set of upset results in international football and return with five elements of the game which were crucial in delivering those upsets. Set pieces were top of the list: the FAI believe Hallgrímsson can improve Ireland’s record on attacking set pieces.
They also expect Hallgrímsson to change the means in which information is imparted to players. Whereas Kenny’s video analysis sessions could be long – sometimes stretching to 90 minutes – it’s expected that Hallgrímsson will deliver less information but more often, rarely in chunks longer than than 15 minutes.
There’s an acknowledgement that Kenny did a lot of good in charge of Ireland, but that he tried to change too much too quickly. Hallgrímsson is expected to layer on his expectations and style more steadily. He is expected to retain some elements of Kenny’s work, and to this end, along with studying Ireland’s recent games, Hallgrímsson has also been watching recorded footage of training sessions under Kenny.
One area in which Kenny is credited with doing an excellent job is in player identification and building squad depth. Kenny’s final recruit was Kasey McAteer, whose Fifa clearance came too late for Kenny, and so is included this month for the very first time. Hallgrímsson is expected to continue to explore these avenues: at Jamaica he benefitted from the earlier recruitment of a swathe of English-born players including Bobby Decordova-Reid, Michail Antonio, and Ethan Pinnock.
Kenny is believed to have also made contact with McAteer’s former Leicester team-mate, Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall, now at Chelsea, with a view to representing Ireland. Dewsbury-Hall didn’t have any interest in a switch at that point, but Hallgrímsson might check again. Sunderland left-back Dennis Cirkin is another name to watch in this regard.
Kenny handed out 20 debuts while he was in charge of Ireland, and significantly lowered the squad’s average age. Having inherited the third-oldest squad across Euro 2020 qualifying, Kenny leaves his successor with the second-youngest of the 54 squads who attempted qualifying for Euro 2024.
Hallgrímsson gave debuts to 27 players aged 23 and under while in charge of Jamaica, an experimentation made easier by his arranging internationals for home-based players outside the official Fifa windows. He wants to import that plan to Ireland.
There is a certain synergy in the opposite direction, too. The FAI’s financial troubles will not be a novel experience for Hallgrímsson: his first words on qualifying for the Copa America accentuated the financial windfall for the cash-strapped Jamaican Football Federation.
Jamaica qualified for the Copa courtesy of their record in the Concacaf Nations League, where they topped their group and beat Canada over two legs in the quarter-finals on their way to finishing third. Jamaica struggled at the Copa, however, losing all three games to Mexico, Ecuador, and Venezuela.
Hallgrímsson informed the Jamaican federation of his intention to stand down a month prior to the Copa, and told the players of his plans on the eve of their final game. Asked by the Jamaican press as to what would be next for him, Hallgrímsson told them he would take a week off before assessing where next to go. One week later, he was appointed as Ireland manager.
Hallgrímsson’s contract runs only until the end of the 2026 World Cup qualifying, but he is nonetheless moving to Ireland as the FAI wanted candidates to at least have an Irish base. He had previously moved to Jamaica, where he learned the national anthem and spoke some creole.
He had led Jamaica through to the second phase of World Cup qualifying in Concacaf, and with USA, Canada, and Mexico already qualified as hosts, they have a strong chance of ranking among the three automatic qualifiers for the tournament. In spite of that, Hallgrímsson has elected to try and qualify with Ireland, a much, much more difficult task. (Ireland will likely be the third seeds in December’s qualifying draw, with only the 12 group winners qualifying automatically for Fifa’s jamboree.) Sources in Jamaica say Hallgrímsson left as he wanted to be closer to his Iceland home.
His job with Ireland is ultimately to deliver results, and to do so says he will take things “a little bit back to basics.”
The recruitment of international managers is a results business, too, and Heimir Hallgrímsson now has the opportunity to render criticisms and worries around the FAI’s exhaustive search process entirely moot.
