Stephen Kenny keen for his team to lift the country

Macdara Ferris reports from Abbotstown

There is a huge amount at stake in Slovakia next week in the playoff semi-final for EURO2020 but Republic of Ireland manager Stephen Kenny says his philosophy won’t change and he sees the game as a chance for his team to lift the nation.

“We will approach the game in a positive frame of mind and are unlikely to be cautious,” he said on Sunday speaking to the media at FAI HQ.

“It is a tremendous opportunity for us. The possibility of the European Championships in Ireland is unique. It has never happened before and maybe never happen again. 

“There is a kind of motivation to lift the country. It would be an incredible experience for the whole country. We are a long way away from that. It is a tough game and it is only a semi-final. We will have to do something extra-ordinary and win away from home.”

The game comes on the back of the recent matches against Bulgaria and Finland where Kenny believes his squad got an awful lot out of those matches and now it is time to put that to the test in this much anticipated play-off.

“This game has been spoken about for a long time. The players are looking forward to playing in it. The games in the Nations League gave us an opportunity to increase our options in the forward and midfield areas to see what worked and didn’t work. 

“We got a lot of positives from what we worked on. It is an incredible opportunity and the players themselves realise that. Slovakia will be highly motivated. They are at home. There will be an expectation on them. 

“Slovakia are a possession based team who like to control games themselves. It will be two teams that will try and win the game. It will be an intriguing tactical battle.

"It is our ambition to control the game. They will have other ideas. In their other games they’ve had 60% possession so that will be a challenge. We have a job to do. They are a very good team and we are going to have to be exceptional ourselves. We are focussed on that and the jobs we need to do. 

“We finished the game very strongly against Bulgaria. We scored late and for the majority of the game we were in the ascendancy bar some counter attacks. Against Finland we tired for certain in the last quarter as it was in the pre-season and players hadn’t played games. The players have played a lot of games since then.

“James McCarthy got minutes yesterday. Jeff Hendrick has played every game for Newcastle. Conor Hourihane is playing every week for Aston Villa.”

With Coleman out, Shane Duffy will have the captain’s armband and he is another player who has benefited from getting more game time since the September international matches.  

“Shane Duffy has played a lot of games – one every three or four days and he hasn’t had that for a long time. They’ve had games in the Europa League against Sarajevo and he has been part of qualifying them for the group stages and they’ve kept clean sheets. The more football he plays the better he will be.” 

Captain Coleman set to miss playoff as Kenny hopes players come through busy Sunday schedule https://t.co/mqAUHYlIB1pic.twitter.com/H1toiJXG8s

— Extratime.com (@ExtratimeNews) October 4, 2020