Gavin Cooney

SATURDAY’S DEFEAT TO the Netherlands is expected to be the final competitive game of Stephen Kenny’s tenure, with Tuesday’s friendly against New Zealand set to be a muted farewell. 

After the game, all of the Irish players who were asked about Kenny’s position backed him to stay on. When the questions were changed to include an acknowledgement that Kenny is expected to leave, nobody was minded to indulge. 

“Well, my view is that the manager is still here and we’re treating it as so”, said Jason Knight. “The manager has been great to me and the players. We want to be winning more games for him but we’ll see what happens.” 

Gavin Bazunu chimed in agreement. 

“I can’t speak on the future”, said the goalkeeper, Ireland’s best performer in Amsterdam.

“Obviously I’ve no idea what’s going to happen there but in terms of him as a manager he’s been incredible. I saw something at the start of the week about all of the players that have been capped under him, the trust he had shown in so many young players, the players who at the start of his reign who wouldn’t have even been involved, like myself, the starting XI who played on Saturday. a great number of them wouldn’t have been involved before his reign. Now we have a really young team, a team that in two or three years will be looking to be really aggressive.

“You can can understand the frustration, it’s just as frustrating for us as we can see how close we are, we just haven’t been able to get the results we needed, so I can understand the frustration but any real football fan can see the promise in these players and the way we want to play, it’s going to be important into the future.” 

But Bazunu is insistent that, whatever happens, the style of play which Kenny has inculcated must be retained. 

“I think that’s the way the game is going”, said Bazunu. “If you look at every team across the Premier League and all of the top teams in Europe, everyone is trying to play that way because it’s the right way to play football. It’s not good enough to just sit back in and play a five and a four and hope for the best because number one, nobody wants to see that, but as well, playing against those top teams they’ll just cut you open.” 

Asked whether he believed Ireland had the players suited to Kenny’s style, Bazunu said, “Definitely. Because you look at the games that we’ve played and one goal at home against France and one goal here. They’re very fine margins away from being brilliant results.”  

Ireland were the third seeds landed into a group of death, drawing France and Netherlands, but they finished fourth, losing home and away to the top two along with fourth seeds Greece. 

“I think we’ve shown we can go toe to toe playing really aggressive football against some of the best teams in the world, we’ve just fallen short on results”, said Bazunu when asked to assess the campaign. “The way we play is really brave and expansive and at times if the result falls the other way people look at us as a very different team. At the moment, teams have been punishing us more than we’ve been punishing them and I think that’s where we’re at the moment.”