Euro 2024: Building for the future the realistic goal for Ireland
Manager Stephen Kenny prior to the Republic of Ireland squad announcement at the Aviva Stadium in Dublin. Picture: Seb Daly/Sportsfile
LAST night, Stephen Kenny’s Irish team faced Greece in the Aviva and we hope they claimed a much-needed victory against the Hellenic visitors ahead of our trip to Portugal for our encounter with group minnows Gibraltar on Monday.
Ireland must win all their remaining games — and here we are presuming all went well against Greece last night — even though we have only been successful in one of our five qualification games so far in this qualification group. Yet we will travel with confidence of a win to Gibraltar and if all things go well, on to the Netherlands in November.
But even if the presumption of a win against Greece may in hindsight seem silly, the circumstances for our qualification looks ludicrous.
In our hope scenario, The Dutch must lose their next three with their game against Gibraltar being their only win, while the Greeks must lose to Ireland and France but beat the Dutch.
Even if that unlikely series of results does not exactly work out, and by some weird set of circumstances we have a three-way tie for second, then it goes down to our head-to-head record and then down to goal difference. Currently, Ireland are behind on all categories.
In reality, claiming a March play-off, based on last year’s Nations League standings, may be our only hope of qualifying for Euro 2024, but even that scenario appears fanciful.
Ireland need as many teams as possible, who are currently ahead of us in the Nations League rankings, to qualify automatically from their groups. As it stands only 16 teams ahead of us in the rankings are currently automatically qualifying. Leaving Ireland outside the play-off spots.
In the best of circumstances, a team facing these set of challenges would find it nearly impossible to advance, but the news on injuries is not that great, making the process all the more unlikely. Cork players John Egan and Caoimhin Kelleher were already ruled out due to injury and they were joined on the therapy table, this week, by Aaron Connolly, with Kenny calling in Blackburn’s Sammy Szmodics for cover. While another key Cork player in Alan Browne, while named in the squad, appears to be down with an illness and we can only hope that he will be back to play some role, for the Gibraltar game at least.
The retirement news of side talisman James McClean came as a bit of a surprise too and removes an inspirational tool available to Kenny, especially in difficult game situations when he needs to inject some life into an attack.
During Kenny’s midweek press briefings, the Tallaght man declared that the team would fight on to the end. Which is noble stuff and the kind of thing we expect from any side in a green shirt. But the facts remain that Kenny and the team are realistically only in the business of building a legacy.
For Kenny, the legacy is to leave on a high, with an enhanced record, when the now inevitable chop drops next year. And for the team it is a chance to set up the best possible platform for a new manager while keeping their name in the discussion when the new man comes to selecting his own panel.
But a bigger legacy issue has now honed in on the horizon this week with the news that Turkey pulled out of the bidding for Euro 2028. They were the last remaining opposition to the UK and Ireland’s joint bid to stage the tournament. So, with that ‘honour’ of hosting a group and quarter-final in five-years’ time very much now on, it is imperative that we find a way of qualifying for that.
As part of a multiple country bid we are not guaranteed qualification and the thought that we would not be invited to a party we are hosting is a another rather unwanted scenario for this team and country.
Whatever happens to the remainder of our Euro2024 qualification matches, it is vital that we unlock a set of circumstances that assures a path to our very own tournament in Euro2028.
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