Cult of Stephen Kenny

The tournament before our last tournament we got zero points and 1 goal. A truly embarrassing showing.

Yeah, one of the last 5. In the other 4 not only did we do better than zero points, we actually qualified from the group.

What you've said is not the reality of how Irish teams perform in tournaments. It was a complete outlier. And in defense of that team, the group involved both teams who would go on to contest the final of the whole competition. We were in one of the hardest groups in the history of an international tournament.

Your stats are harping back to our golden era of football. It's not comparable to the last 15 years of Irish football.

2012 featured at the heart of that era. That's what I'm judging Kenny against. Not an era were the whole squad were playing for top tier PL teams.

ntil we have 4/5 players starting regularly in a top5 league we'll be poor, not to excuse the performance saturday its just a fact. we need an elite star player to come out of somewhere to drag us through like wales have with bale

We're a low tier country which is pretty much the crux of it. We've rarely had good teams, produced a few good players over the years and very few in recent times. The late 80', 90's were an anomaly in Irish football's history. Even then we missed out on a lot of tournaments(92,96, 98, 2000).

Italy played a number of their starters, and the people that came in off the bench to start that game included Immobile and Bernadeschi, who have featured regularly for Italy since and during Euro 2020, which they won.

We are a mid level European team - given we are in Nations League 2nd tier. But if we were a low level european team - we should play to our strengths and not get in a fella way out of his depth to have the players pass it around the back five for 75 minutes, before hoofing it for 15 when the other thing invevitably hasn't worked.

Some of the best performances in the history of Irish football have come in the last 15 years. Utterly f*cking hilarious that you would try to reduce those performances to hoofball, you absolute armchair bluffer.

For once here in Ireland we are thinking of a longer-term development of the international team. That's why I like Stephen Kenny and even when they lose this team plays way more interesting than any Irish team for a very long time. You get the sense that it will click for this bunch and I for one am happy to be patient with them.

Yeah and we can use the same excuses for our WC qualifying campaign just gone. Only 2 teams and top teams at that qualified.

So ya know, its almost like depending on one's bias they can state stats to back up that pov.

See this is where there's a divide; the people who are just happy to pass it and pass it until we get to areas where a pass would be required and we hoof it into the box. That seems like the Kenny philosophy as it plays out on the pitch. I don't actually mind losing but we still lose in the same bland Irish way. I remember Belgium(much more promising players than we have so not a great example perhaps) but back in like 2010-2013 when their golden era was emerging, they'd lose games 4-3, be 3 up and end up drawing 3-3 and they missed out on all those tournaments until 2014 but that to me seemed an interesting time to be a fan. That's what I thought a revolution would look like. Our problem is that we are still a cautious unimaginative team with zero goal threat. We still play like your typical Irish team.

The hoofball was very difficult to watch and we couldn't string 3 passes together. We might just about qualify for something and then get decimated.

The hoofball was pure groan to watch, almost unbearable.

But now ...eventhough the results are worse...there's entertainment in the way we play, there's excitement. There's pleasure! You're egging on every pass, you don't quiet know what will happen next.

We weren't good v Armenia. Eventhough I thought we were better and created more chances . We lack goal scoring formulas. And we were loose on their breaks.

That said I look forward to the next game..in anticipation of what kind of passing and rewards the team might conjure up. I really can't say that about the previous set ups of hoofball...save for MacCarty s rein...he seemed to almost find a happy medium...

Serbia weren't even in the Euros and Portugal were eliminated in the 2nd round. There is absolutely no comparison between those teams and the sides we had in our group in 2012. None.

Soccer

When Ireland get to big tournaments in soccer there is way more public interest than there is in something like the RWC.

Far more of the general public are familiar with soccer, the clubs, the players, the history etc than rugby.

Thus when big soccer events come around there is far more general public interest.

staunton also had some of the best irish players ever.