Stephen Kenny thinks Martin O'Neill took satisfaction in his Ireland failure
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Stephen Kenny is adamant it’s very difficult to do the work of an international manager using Wyscout.
Current Ireland manager Heimir Hallgrimsson has frequently referenced the popular football analytics platform as an important way to track the performances of Irish players, suggesting it’s much more efficient that travelling to games in England every weekend.
But his predecessor doesn’t agree. While he wasn’t being critical in any way of Hallgrimsson, Kenny was asked during an interview on the
Second Captains podcast what he made of using Wyscout.
“When you go to matches live it’s the only way to really see a game. You see the full picture.
“I was at four matches a week in England from when I was (Ireland) U21 manager. We went to a lot of games, compiled a lot of information.
“Wyscout is a television picture, it doesn’t give you any more than that. You can’t see anything really. You can request as an international manager the camera angles, from the teams, which I did as well.
“But live when you see games it’s completely different. As an international manager it’s important, you’ve got to monitor form.”
Kenny accepts it may have been different for earlier managers like Giovanni Trapattioni, who had a reasonably settled team of players playing regularly in their club sides.
“But all of my time, players were in and out of teams for long periods. You’ve got to monitor form.
“You can meet players and so forth too and that can be useful. Not repetitively, you don’t want to for the sake of it. But really it’s just to see the games and players' roles within the games and the challenges they face.”
New England boss Thomas Tuchel has said he will be speaking to Gareth Southgate before finalising his plans for an assault on the World Cup. However, Kenny hasn’t yet had a debrief with Halgrimmson.
“I did speak to him briefly at the FAI Cup final, and he came over and said hello and said he’ll like to have a coffee at some stage. We’ve not done that.
"I wish him well, I wish the whole team well. I’m an ireland supporter.”
It was put to Kenny that his predecessor Martin O'Neill seemed to take a certain amount of satisfaction with some of his commentary on Kenny’s eventual struggles in the job, perhaps stung by Kenny's early bullishness about how he was going to change Ireland's style of play.
While reluctant to be critical of O'Neill, Kenny accepted that appeared to be the case.
"At that time they (O'Neill's Ireland) were playing a certain way. Don’t get me wrong, getting to the Euros in 2016 was brilliant.
"But in the latter years, there was some criticism, I suppose because Dundalk were playing in Europe in a different way against top teams, I suppose people felt if players not of international standard can play that way, why can’t the international team play?
"That was the argument I felt. I wasn’t making it at the time, it was other people. But I wasn’t critical of the previous teams.
“I had a relationship with him, a good relationship, but obviously there had been a bit of sniping alright. I’m not going to get into that really, whatever.
“I’d had a good relationship with him, even when he got the job, I’d been in touch with him because he came to some of the (Dundalk) games in the Europa League and so forth. So my relationship with Martin was fine, but obviously he did seem to take some satisfaction in us just not succeeding."