As Stephen Kenny announced his Republic of Ireland squad for the friendlies with Andorra and Hungary next month, he aimed a subtle dig at prior squad management.
Kenny has called in the likes of Andrew Omobamidele and Danny Mandroiu into what is a 27-man squad.
He returned to a theme raised in the last camp, related to opportunities given to younger players.
Stephen Kenny on squad management
"He has looked extremely composed and athletic"
Stephen Kenny gives the strengths of the four new faces in the Ireland squad for the upcoming friendlies 🇮🇪
Football w/@paddypower pic.twitter.com/grmF5gLgo2— Off The Ball (@offtheball) May 24, 2021
"We have radically changed things. We've brought 15 new players into the international setup before this camp in the six-month period and have capped 13 players, not including Aaron Connolly who had one cap.
"This is quite radical and some might feel that it is too much change too quickly but in my opinion we have had absolutely no development in eight or nine years - we've had one [maybe] one player through in nine years, and nobody looking at that.
"We have got players aged 29 and 30, and some aged 20 and nothing in between. We have a bigger vision for what we want to achieve going forward. Not all of these players will become top-class international players but a number of them will."
Qualifying
Kenny reiterated his plans for concerted youth development, following a disappointing start to World Cup 2022 qualifying.
"We have got a lot of talent that we want to see develop and we want to see the team thrive and we have a clear idea of how we want to do that. The other side of that is that we're disappointed that we had a mixed camp, a good performance against Serbia, disappointed to lose, but we didn't play well against Luxembourg. I know that.
"When you look back at it, we should have played better than we did. I do believe that we have players that have shown potential that haven't been given the years that we'd have wanted, for injuries and other reasons.
"We do have a number of players [...] who will give us a bigger selection over the next few years."
