Former Republic of Ireland manager Martin O’Neill believes he was treated much harsher than current incumbent Stephen Kenny and admits he is still bitter about the manner of his exit, reports RTE.
The pressure on Kenny continues to mount as Ireland’s hopes of qualifying for Euro 2024 fade.
A 2-1 loss to the Netherlands on Sunday left Ireland with just three points from five games and it looks like Kenny will fail to qualify for a major tournament for the third time.
Ireland last qualified for a major championship when O’Neill led Ireland to Euro 2016, but he parted ways with the FAI two years later after missing out on winless participation in the 2018 World Cup and Nations League.
Speaking on TalkSport, O’Neill said: “I managed the side and I lost my job over some of the results at the end and I thought international football was about winning football games, it’s about winning. The Irish media have put Stephen in charge and therefore they are still going to peddle this idea that he has changed the course of football. That the Republic of Ireland play a different type of football,” reports RTE.
“They put him in charge because they were very strongly in favour of him and the FAI succumbed and went with that, which was fine. The whole idea was he would change the course of football. We’re going to be a possession team, we are going to change it. That’s very, very difficult to change when you are an international manager. You have players for two or three days. You’re not going to change a lot of things in that time and it’s all very well having possession when your two centre-halves pass the ball to each other on a number of occasions, and you get your stats up,” he said, reports RTE.
“The bottom line is you have to win football games. The Republic of Ireland want to qualify. I heard them saying this was a difficult group, which it was. France are a very good side. But we qualified from a group in 2016 that featured the world champions Germany. We actually beat Germany. So you have to go and win some football games,” he added, reports RTE.
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