REPUBLIC of Ireland manager Stephen Kenny says it will “hurt” watching next month’s European Championships – and is confident Jeff Hendrick will be back in the fold come next September’s World Cup Qualifiers with Portugal, Azerbaijan and Serbia.
Eyebrows were raised when Hendrick wasn’t included in the Irish squad’s end of season training camp in Spain where they will play friendly games against Andorra before moving on to play Hungary over the next eight days.
Hendrick didn’t make Kenny’s starting XI for the March qualifier defeats to Serbia and Luxembourg. Upon announcing his training camp squad earlier this month, Kenny said the Newcastle United midfielder was absent for private reasons.
When asked via zoom at the weekend would Hendrick be available for selection in September, the manager replied: “In relation to Jeff, definitely. He is available for selection.”
James McCarthy’s future involvement was a little less certain with the Crystal Palace man struggling with different injuries for the last number of seasons.
“I think the question for James is his body. He just needs to get sorted out and his body is obviously difficult to get a run of games under his belt,” Kenny said.
“James loves playing for Ireland and loves any time he is in with us, but just the demands of playing international football and club football combined, he just has to weigh all of that up. If he can get a run of games, then he wants to play. It's not a question of lack of commitment to Ireland.
“The question is can he stay injury-free… It's more to do with that than anything else. He is quite close to a few of the players here.”
The call-up of Sam Szmodics of Peterborough to the Irish squad surprised everyone, with Kenny revealing the attacker, who grabbed 15 goals for the newly promoted Championship club, qualified to play for Ireland through his Granard-born grandmother.
Seamus Coleman has travelled with the squad to Girona and will miss Thursday’s Andorra friendly with a hamstring strain but hasn’t ruled out featuring against Hungary on Tuesday week.
Still winless after 11 games, Kenny wants to see plenty of improvement in training and for the players to better understand the different systems of play in the upcoming friendly games.
“We’ve got to improve. We have to have the desire to improve,” said Kenny.
“Some of our better performances [were defeats]. It hurts with the Euros coming up and obviously to lose a penalty shoot-out in Slovakia was devastating at the time and those are the margins.
"There are areas we certainly need to improve, I think the players are well aware of that and we need to give clear instructions and this week gives them the opportunity to understand that.”
Former UCD player and current U23 coach at Crystal Palace Stephen Rice has been drafted in for the trip and will cover some of Ruaidhri Higgins’ duties since he returned to Derry City as manager, while Anthony Barry will hook with the squad later following his Champions League final involvement with Chelsea.
“Stephen has been doing some match reports for me in London, so he just came out for this camp obviously with Anthony [Barry] not being here for a few days. He’s just an extra person working with the analysts.”
Kenny has yet to replace Higgins in his backroom team.
