Kerr: If the Faroes can do it, Ireland can

AS Faroe Islands manager, Brian Kerr has inadvertently become the go-to guy when it comes to people seeking enlightenment about Ireland’s play-off opponents.

Kerr’s team had come up against France in their qualification campaign before Ireland drew the latter in the World Cup play-off two year ago and, now, he is again well placed to run the rule over Ireland ‘s European Championship play-off opposition, having encountered Estonia twice in group which also contained Italy, Northern Ireland, Serbia and Slovenia .

Not only that but, encouragingly for Ireland, the Faroes achieved a rare competitive victory by beating Estonia 2-0 at home, having only lost narrowly — and heartbreakingly — 2-1 in Tallinn when the Estonians staged a late, late comeback with two stoppage-time goals.

“Estonia are hard working and well organised but also quite adventurous,” says the former Ireland manager. It wouldn’t be the case that the centre midfield players just sit in and play there. (Konstantin) Vassiljev is more likely to be up in the box than in front of his own back four. And the full-backs will certainly attack.”

“But they are the weakest team of the eight that were left in the draw and we almost beat them in Tallinn and did beat them in the Faroes. In the aggregate scores we beat them 3-2 and there have to be deficiencies in their make-up if we can do that. I was genuinely surprised that they finished ahead of Serbia, Slovenia and Northern Ireland. They were certainly a team I felt in advance we might get points off and we prepared very well towards that.

“But, equally, out of the four top seeds in the draw I’d say Estonia would have said, ‘we’ll take Ireland because they’ll be a bit similar in style to Northern Ireland, the players play in the same leagues and they don’t play a very technical game’. That’s what Estonia would be saying.”

Playing at home doesn’t seem to be a significant advantage for Estonia who, apart from thumping Northern Ireland and only narrowly beating the Faroes, lost to Italy and Slovenia and drew with Serbia in Tallinn .

“The ground is not particularly threatening or volatile,” says Kerr. “It’s a nice, neat place. But it suits them. They get passionate crowds, they play full-on to the last minute, and they score a fair number of late goals.

“They have great team spirit. I reckon they play more matches than anyone else in international football because they’re always putting teams together to go off and play in December, January and February.”

But, when it comes to the crunch next month, Brian Kerr reckons Ireland will come out on top.

“Ireland should be way out favourites without a shadow of a doubt and I don’t think there will be complacency on the basis that the prize is so big and we’ve fallen at this hurdle a few times before,” he says. “Complacency won’t be the biggest problem for Ireland, the opposition will. The fact that they won in Serbia, Slovenia and Northern Ireland shows that they’re competent and they’re effective. They’re dangerous at set pieces and well organised and hard-working. But they don’t have players who’ve played at the level of the Irish players. And that should give our fellas the advantage.”