Gavin Cooney

STEPHEN KENNY SAYS he expects to be in charge for the rest of Ireland’s Euro 2024 qualifying campaign, with Friday’s defeat in Greece intensifying speculation about his future once again. 

The 2-1 defeat in Athens means Ireland’s campaign is hanging by a thread, as they remain on zero points after two games, with a trip to Paris ahead along with both games against the Netherlands. 

Asked whether he expected to be in charge for the rest of the qualifying campaign – including any potential play-off next March – Kenny said, “Yeah, I definitely do. My contract is up till the end of the campaign and whether it’s renewed will depend on how people feel the campaign went overall but certainly I fully expect to be.”

Speculation about his future has sat alongside fierce criticism since the Greece game, but Kenny has dismissed these critiques as irrelevant. 

“It’s irrelevant, to be honest it’s irrelevant, I just really focus on developing the team and preparing the team for tomorrow. There is a lot of criticism, some of it justified, and I have to accept that. Likewise some of it is inaccurate, that’s the nature of it. From my point of view, I’m not fixated with it. I’m just firmly focused on what we have to do and just focused on the task at hand which is managing this group of players.

“We’re not perfect but I really believe in the players. I believe in the players, I know people have other viewpoints but I believe in the players. It’s not perfect that a lot of them are not playing at their clubs, that’s been really tough for them. Some of our better players are not playing for their clubs and that’s been difficult.

“That’s not an excuse, we wanted to win against Greece, we didn’t win but that is the reality. Other players that should be in the team but they haven’t been playing in so long and they are amongst our most talented, is a sense of frustration but that’s the reality. It’s very hard to come out of not playing for months and months and then play at international level, particularly a game of the intensity of the other night. That’s the reality.

“But I believe in the players that we’ve got, we’ve got a really talented group coming through, we’re really disappointed the other night, if we had won the other night against Greece everything would have been on track, we’d have been going into the Gibraltar game with everything great.

“Now, because we didn’t it’s a catastrophe, and I do get that, but we’ve got to focus on tomorrow and Gibraltar, make sure we are ready, I know the games were tight previously so we have to just get ourselves ready and make sure we get a home victory.”

Asked if anything other than a win against Gibraltar would be unthinkable, Kenny steered away from contextualising anything with regard to his future in the job. 

“In terms of European Championship qualification, yeah, it is.”

Kenny still believes Ireland can finish in the group’s top two, which is Ireland’s only guaranteed route to qualification with a play-off not yet guaranteed.

“It’d have been a lot easier if we had won on Friday, we made life difficult for ourselves and we are just going to have to get some exceptional results between now and the end of the season. France I think will win the group, that’s pretty clear, Greece have to play Holland twice, we have to play Holland twice, play Greece in Dublin so there’s still a lot of football to be played

Reflecting on the game in Athens, Kenny said, “Greece performed better than us on the night so we can’t have any complaints but, obviously, the goals were just turning points at critical times for us, at the start of each half, and obviously disappointed with the two goals we conceded. That changes the ebb and flow of the game, we did well to get back into the game straight away.

“We nearly scored within a minute of the first goal we conceded, then we got back in and got the goal after that. And then we nearly scored within a minute of the (second) goal we conceded again. We responded well at times but there’s no doubt we could have played better than we did, and we’re disappointed to lose.

“Greece played well on the night, I think, two teams are probably ranked along similar lines. I think they had more experience, I feel we’ve more potential. It’s a narrow defeat, a very, very narrow defeat, we lost by a goal. We just have to make sure we respond well and win on Monday and in the games coming up. We’ve got to respond well. They’ve still got to come to Dublin so that will be a different situation.”

Kenny said there would be changes to the team for tomorrow night’s game, although the suspended Matt Doherty is the only absentee with everybody else fit. 

James McClean will start as captain, on what will be the occasion of his 100th cap. 

“To hopefully get a 100 caps and join the illustrious names on that list will be pretty special”, said McClean. “Not just for everyone but my family and everyone who helped me to make that happen. If it happens, it’s certainly one I’ll enjoy.

“Being able to do that just once was special. I’ve never hidden the fact of how proud I am to be Irish. To be given the opportunity to step on the pitch and effect games for your country. That’s what I’m proudest of.”