JAMES MCCLEAN has never been shy in offering a strong opinion and his punditry debut for RTÉ last night was no exception ahead of Ireland’s friendly with Portugal.
The 35-year-old Wrexham player, who won 103 caps for his country before recently retiring from international football, was critical of the Stephen Kenny era.
McClean suggested Ireland were no longer “hard to beat” under Kenny.
The Derry native explained: “We qualified for two tournaments, Euro 2012 and 2016, and got to a play-off under Mick McCarthy, if Mick had been in charge we potentially would have got to three in a row under that style of play.
“Nowadays you can get sucked into the whole total football and statistics. ‘We had 59% possession’. But a lot of it was across the backline, and we lost the game. We have always been hard to beat and in the last three years, we have gone away from that. We have built our foundations: being hard to beat and having that bit of nastiness about us. You will always get opportunities in games, and then we have to take the opportunities. Seeing the last three games, we have become hard to beat again.”
The first part is impossible to definitively argue for or against — Ireland could well have qualified under McCarthy but it was still a big ask.
They had finished third in their group but only managed three wins — home and away against Gibraltar and home versus Georgia.
To qualify, they would have needed to beat both Slovakia and Northern Ireland away from home.
They certainly played a different, more progressive style under Kenny compared to McCarthy but were they easier to play against or considerably inferior in this system, as McClean implied? Yes and no.
The overall results during the Kenny era were unquestionably poor. Aside from the Nations League victory at home against Scotland, there is no especially impressive competitive win that even the manager’s most ardent defenders could point to.
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‘In the last three years we have gone away from that’ - James McClean says Ireland became easier to play against in recent years, losing some of their noted ‘nastiness’
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But there is a tendency to make sweeping statements about Kenny’s time in charge, when the reality is far more complex and nuanced.
While Kenny only won 11 out of his 40 games in charge, they only lost by three goals on one occasion (in the 2020 friendly with England).
That’s not bad when you consider opponents at that time included some of the best sides in the world, such as France, Portugal, Netherlands and Belgium.
Compare that to the nadirs of supposedly more defensive, pragmatic coaches in Giovanni Trapattoni and Martin O’Neill, when they lost 6-1 and 5-1 at home to Germany and Denmark respectively, and the easy-to-play-against insinuation seems misguided.
Ireland may have suffered too many defeats under Kenny, but they were invariably competitive, even against the top sides in international football.
McCarthy, of course, was not on the end of such a thrashing, but he only managed 10 matches in his second term and five of those were against either Georgia, Gibraltar or New Zealand.
It seems somewhat harsh and unsatisfactory to compare John O’Shea with Kenny, as the situations are completely different. But against Portugal, Ireland were harder to beat when the latter was in charge.
It’s interesting to compare the statistics from last night to the last time Ireland faced the Portuguese away.
You could argue that the Boys in Green were always going to be much more motivated for a qualifier than an end-of-season friendly, but it’s interesting to examine the differences.
The stats do not support the perception that Ireland were naive and overly ambitious/attack-minded under Kenny compared to now supposedly being pragmatic and “hard to beat” during O’Shea’s stint.
Portugal won both games and Cristiano Ronaldo scored a brace in the two matches but otherwise, the differences are stark.
There is strong evidence to suggest Ireland were more pragmatic with Kenny in charge.
Portugal managed nine shots on target last night compared to seven two years ago.
They completed only 188 passes in Faro compared to 294 last night.
Similarly, Portugal seemingly found it easier to play against O’Shea’s Ireland. In addition to enjoying a more comfortable win, they managed 701 completed passes versus 541 in 2021.
It was also arguably a stronger Portugal XI on the previous occasion, with the likes of Ruben Dias and Bernardo Silva available to start.
None of which is to suggest Ireland were premature to part ways with Kenny nor should the prospect of O’Shea becoming manager necessarily be dismissed.
But to blanketly state that Ireland were not “hard to beat” in three years under the previous boss seems unfair — an overly simplistic reading of a much more complex failure than some critics assume.
The implication that Kenny was primarily interested in possession statistics or adopting free-flowing, attacking football is a stereotype that lacks proper analytical context.
And regardless of what approach the next permanent Ireland manager takes, the squad’s well-documented limitations mean it is likely to be a challenging and painful transition for some time to come.
