AFTER what felt like a never-ending managerial search for the new manager of the Ireland Men’s senior team, the FAI have finally announced Stephen Kenny’s successor. 231 days after Kenny was sacked, Heimir Hallgrímsson is the new boss in town, and he has a huge job on his hands to try and get Ireland back into a major tournament. The appointment looks like it has come completely out of the blue and it took a lot of people, including me, by surprise. If Hallgrímsson was the FAI’s number one choice, as Marc Canham said in the press conference when introducing the new manager, then I think a lot of credit needs to go to the FAI for sticking to their guns but more importantly not letting the news leak as I don’t think I had ever seen Hallgrímsson’s name being mentioned for the job.
The no leak from the association is huge because in times gone by there were leaks all over the FAI especially when it came to a good news story so the old guard like John Delaney could control what was being written about the FAI and bury some other stories with good news.
Time will tell if Hallgrímsson will be a good appointment by the FAI but the more I look at the new manager I think, on paper at least, it is a very clever appointment. The big positive for me on the new manager is that he has in the past done such a wonderful job as manager of Iceland where his resources were a lot less than he will have as Ireland manager. Iceland reached the Euros in 2016 and drew with eventual winners Portugal in the group stages, beat England in the last 16 to cause one of the biggest shocks in recent European Championships history before being knocked out by host nation and finalists France. While the World Cup in 2018 wasn’t as successful for Iceland and Hallgrímsson the results were irrelevant because they had become the smallest nation by population to ever qualify for a World Cup and it was only the second major competition that Iceland had ever qualified for after the Euros in 2016. They beat the Netherlands home and away in qualifying for the 2016 Euros and then in 2018 for the World Cup qualification they finished top of their group ahead of Croatia who were eventual beaten finalists in Russia.
Iceland isn’t exactly a stronghold of a nation in the footballing world and in 2018 they only had roughly 23,000 registered football players in the country which 15,000 of that were men. In the latest figures in Ireland, we have 221,500 registered football players almost ten times the amount of Iceland with almost 200,000 of those registered male players. Hopefully Hallgrímsson will be able to work some of the magic that he had in Iceland throughout his time with Ireland and get us back into a competitive situation.
Hallgrímsson has said he is going to go back to basics in his attempts to be successful for Ireland and that is going to be interesting to see how the fans take to that. Stephen Kenny actually had Ireland playing some nice football, but the results weren’t good enough for him to keep his job while Mick McCarthy’s style was criticised by the supporters in his reign before Kenny’s. McCarthy to his credit was getting decent results for Ireland and only a COVID pandemic stopped him from potentially getting Ireland to Euro 2020 as he left us in a play-off against Slovakia, but contractual issues (from the Delaney era) meant he couldn’t take over and Kenny’s first game was the play-off which we lost on penalties.
There’s more than one way to skin a cat and it is a results-based industry, but fans also want a nice style of football to watch but I feel in our position in world football that we can’t be too demanding and want both initially. If Hallgrímsson was to get us to a major tournament again our first since 2016 whatever style of football he plays should be irrelevant. If he is to do it though it will have to be done quickly as Hallgrímsson has only signed a 17-month contract which will take him to the end of the 2026 World Cup Qualifiers. By leaving Jamacia after the Copa America exit, he has left a job where he was almost certain to reach the World Cup in 2026 which is being held in USA, Canada, and Mexico. With the US and Canada qualifying as host nations Jamica would have been a sure thing to reach the finals so it is a big risk for Hallgrímsson to take leaving to join Ireland but hopefully it is a decision that all of Ireland will be delighted with, and we can look forward to booking our tickets for the US, Canada and Mexico.
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