It was never really about the game. It has been about Stephen Kenny’s future for several months now. Longer, in fact. Greece won 2-0 at the Aviva Stadium on Friday night. But for Kenny, all is now lost. There will be no fairy-tale ending.
Ireland’s Euro 2024 qualification chances had evaporated before the Greeks arrived in Dublin, but this was another sorry night at the end of a managerial reign which has been chugging along on fumes.
Nobody was willing to feed the flame of hope before kick-off, qualification wasn’t going to happen, even before Greece hit Ireland for two first-half goals. These have become the in-between days, a grey limbo, a waiting room preparing for the exit of one management team and the appointment of another.
Kenny’s ambitious plans to change the mindset and reinvigorate Irish football haven’t worked out. There is genuine pity in that. We never got to see what might have happened.
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Because there was a warm and hopeful reception to his appointment. What would happen if we backed ourselves, what would happen if we went all in against the house? It was worth a try. It didn’t work out.
When did the narrative of hope change? Or was this always the arc of the storyline. Was it always destined to fail? It’s hard to remember when Kenny’s reign wasn’t sitting next to a sand clock.
At times, the whole episode has felt like some eldritch fusion – Kenny as part eager football coach, part reluctant dime-store fortune teller. There can’t have been too many international managers asked as often over the past three years to predict their own future.
In the shuffling of the opinion cards, he has been judged somewhere between Match Attax and Tarot.
Kenny mixed and matched his cards here again. Liam Scales was handed his international debut and started left back as Kenny changed his tactical approach, going with a 4-2-3-1 set-up.
Josh Cullen and Alan Browne anchored the team as the holding midfielders while Chiedozie Ogbene – Ireland’s most threatening player throughout – operated on the right and Will Smallbone filled the number 10 role.
Smallbone and Evan Ferguson gave the Greeks cause for concern early on, the former bringing out a save from Vlachodimos after a neat piece of play by Ogbene and the latter catching the outside of the post with a lovely left-footed curler.
However, the warning lights started flashing for Ireland after quarter of an hour as Greece settled and began stringing passes across the field. Gavin Bazunu pulled off a good save from a long-distance Bakasetas shot in the 17th minute.
But three minutes later the Greeks got a slice of luck when in a game of foot tennis between Ogbene and the lively Tsimikas, the bounce of the ball worked in favour of the visitors and the Liverpool player whipped in a sumptuous cross from the left which was met by the airborne Giakoumakis, who headed it powerfully and accurately back across the goal. It was a thumping header.
The goal sucked the life out of the Aviva, which hadn’t exactly been raucous to begin with. The visitors almost punished a mistake by Ferguson towards the end of the half, with the Greeks breaking rapidly and Bazunu again called upon to pull off a save, this time from Pelkas after a delightful disguised pass from Giakoumakis opened the Ireland defence.
Shane Duffy got a header on target from a Smallbone free in the dying seconds of the first half, but there was never enough power in it to trouble Vlachodimos and it appeared the opening period would drift to conclusion with a goal between the sides.
But in first-half injury-time, the Ireland defence were left to look about as steady on their feet as kids on a bouncy castle when Greece broke with a whirlwind counterattack. Ireland were claiming a handball outside the Greek box but the visitors had already launched a long ball down the field and players in green jerseys were scrambling all over the pitch.
Giakoumakis put the ball in from the left and it was able to go straight across the face of the Ireland goal where Pelkas had the awareness, and time, to pull it back across the middle of the box again and Masouras smacked it off the ground and bounced it beyond Bazunu.
As the Greeks spun away in celebration, the first of the boos emerged around the stadium. The second half was nothing. For nothing could be salvaged from the night for Ireland.
But if the endgame is playing out in sorry fashion, of all the plot-twists who would have anticipated Gus Poyet emerging from the Aegean Sea as the clandestine supervillain in Kenny’s tale as Ireland manager?
Following Greece’s victory in Athens in June, Poyet goaded Kenny by suggesting his team were easy to plan for, the Uruguayan happy to leave the implication hanging out there that Kenny was a rudimentary coach, uncouth and predictable. Deep down, whatever about Joe public, such disparaging sentiments from another coach must have hurt Kenny.
And Poyet on Thursday maintained his anti-hero role in this Greek tragedy, snarling back at claims of subterfuge as if it was all some sort of spy thriller, Gary Dicker cameoing in the closing scene, charged with acting as a Machiavellian sleeper cell.
Pure fiction, declared Poyet on suggestions by Keith Andrews that the Greek manager and Dicker had been involved in a covert spot of intelligence sharing.
“Gary is a very honest man, he is a top bloke,” insisted Poyet. “It was a cheap accusation, very cheap.”
Ultimately, what value will eventually be attributed to Kenny’s endeavours with Ireland? He tried to shift the dial, tried to change the culture. It could have been priceless. And it might ultimately prove to be selfless. Self-sacrificing, even. Either way, it cost him everything.
Zombie, by the Cranberries, has become the soundtrack of the Ireland rugby team’s World Cup adventure. One hour before kick-off at the Aviva on Friday night, the PA system opted for another of the Limerick band’s hits – Dreams.
Stephen Kenny had many as Ireland manager. They haven’t come true.
All that’s happening here is the long goodbye.
