SOME MIXTURE OF the Covid Era and the lousy result means you’ll have likely memory-holed most of the details of Ireland’s previous trip to Wembley. You recall that Ireland were utterly overwhelmed in an empty stadium, and were easily beaten 3-0. But beyond that, does anything ring a bell? If Harry Maguire has scored an opening goal but nobody is there to have seen it.
..can it be said to have happened at all? The records show that Maguire did score, along with Jadon Sancho and Dominic Calvert-Lewin.
Not that anyone in England knows this: they recall that game for nothing other than Jude Bellingham’s senior debut, given he came off the bench with 17 minutes remaining. And not to start straying into grander territory than a football game here, but England have always had the luxury of forgetting what Ireland are fated to remember. That Wembley game and its preparation proved to be the black box for Stephen Kenny’s reign.
A history-inflected motivational video shown to the players by Stephen Kenny led to a fulminating controversy, at the end of which Damien Duff and Alan Kelly walked away from the set-up, for reasons they have yet to explain. Heimir Hallgrimsson has no plans to show his own motivational video. “If a national team player cannot motivate himself, he should not be in the national team”, said Hallgrimsson at his pre-match press conference.
Kenny’s problem was less the content of his video than the fact it leaked from the supposed sanctity of his camp. F.