Ken Early: It seems evident the new manager sees Ireland much as Trapattoni, O’Neill and McCarthy did
England's Jack Grealish and Declan Rice during a training session in advance of England's visit to the Aviva Stadium. Photograph: Joe Giddens/PA Wire
This evening in Dublin, Grealish has a chance to play his way back into the England picture thanks to interim manager Lee Carsley, the man the FAI originally wanted to succeed Stephen Kenny. There are also TRANSITION and FORMATION philosophy statements but by now you probably get the picture. It was a good question – if we’re honest, what do we really get excited about? What are the most famous 21st-century images of the Irish football team in action? There’s the picture of Roy Keane tackling Marc Overmars from behind in the first minute of the Ireland-Holland game in 2001. An image laced with emotion, in this case aggression.
Hallgrímsson and John O’Shea have both spoken this week of how it’s more important to calm the Irish players down than to rev them up. The game they’re playing has evolved into an endless flowing sequence of number-puzzles that are better solved with a cool head than the battle-fever we used to think you needed for big matches.
This evolution in the game has coincided with Ireland’s decline as a force in international football. The battle-fever days suited us. The sudoku-logic-puzzle beating-the-press game, we’re still coming to grips with. Football kids in Ireland have not been coached in this style of play from the cradle like the better-resourced kids in Spain or England or even, apparently, Florida.
Stephen Kenny: tried to change the way Ireland played but without success. Photograph: Tim Clayton/Corbis via Getty Images
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