One of the things about watching a major international football tournament, is that it makes the absence of your own national side feel all the more frustrating.
A year after it was known that we would need a replacement for Stephen Kenny and eight months after his actual departure, it somehow came as a surprise to most of us, that in the middle of the Euros, the FAI would suddenly announce that they had found Kenny’s replacement. And it was someone barely anyone would have expected.
Heimir Hallgrímsson was not on the list of next Irish boss for Irish fans. Not only because he had not been mentioned by pundits or bookies, but because few of us would even have an idea of how to spell his name.
We had been going around the Ferris wheel of possible appointments for the job. Lee Carsley, Anthony Barry, Gus Poyet, and Willy Sagnol had all been linked at various stages in the process. Only for it to go around the list one more time as each candidate was ruled out or opted out of consideration.
The FAI’s inability to corner a replacement for the position left us angry and frustrated with Nations League matches and qualification for the World Cup just around the corner. Interim boss John O’Shea did a good enough job, considering the situation, during the post-season friendlies. Enough for most of us to say, ‘just give him the job and have done with it’. But it seems the FAI actually had a target and so we now have a 57-year-old Icelandic, dentist, in charge. (Yes, future ‘appointment, extraction, and fill-ing… headlines will be great).
While few of us would have known his name, we do know Hallgrímsson’s work as the assistant coach with his native side in Euro 2016, where Iceland drew against Portugal (eventual champions) and Hungary 1-1 in their first group games. Then advancing on the back of a great 2-1 win over Austria. Followed, most famously of all, by ending England’s participation in the Round of 16 with a 2-1 win over Roy Hodgson’s side. Effectively ending the veteran English coach’s international career in management. Iceland would go out in the quarter finals to France but not before the side and maybe even more so the Icelandic fans, won many plaudits for their battling play and the ‘Viking Thunderclap’.
Hallgrímsson took sole charge of Iceland after that and qualified his side for the 2018 World Cup in Russia. Where they were unfortunate to be drawn in that campaign’s ‘Group of Death’ against Argentina, Croatia and Nigeria. Despite holding the 2014 runners-up Argentina to a credible 1-1 draw, they notedly missed some good chances against Nigeria and Croatia and lost to both sides, eventually exiting the tournament.
Hallgrimsson would then become head coach of Qatari club side Al-Arabi for two and a half years before taking over the Jamica head coach job, leading them to the qualification in the recently completed Copa America. Unfortunately, the ‘Reggae Boys’ were convincingly knocked out at the group stages with Hallgrímsson resigning after their last match a few weeks ago.
The era of Stephen Kenny was marked by improved football, visually, but marked a serious step backwards regarding results. And in the final analysis the game boils down to results, which I’m sure Hallgrímsson knows full well after his recent Jamaica departure.
The similarities between Ireland and Iceland are there, beyond the difference of a single letter. They are both North Atlantic sides not that accustomed to success but who enjoy it and make a spectacle of it whenever it comes around.
There are obvious differences too. Our game is British orientated while Iceland, understandably, look to the Nordic model. We will be hoping that Hallgrímsson will bring the kind of success he brought to his homeland on the biggest of stages. But then there will be questions on whether that success was more down to the talents head coach, Swedish-born, Lars Lagerback, rather than his assistant Hallgrímsson.
Hallgrímsson has spoken of his anticipation at taking over a young and exciting team in Ireland. He made the right call in his first decision to keep John O’Shea in the management mix for continuity. And Ireland as a nation has now suffered a long reign without success and will be eager, even enthused, for him to turn around our fortunes. But any patience will be exhausted pretty quickly after the many chances given to Kenny were squandered over recent years.
Saying that, success in Hallgrímsson’s first game this September, which just happens to be against England, would not only endear him to fans, it would guarantee him legendary status straight out the gate.
