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STEPHEN KENNY HAS previously spent much of his tenure hostage to unusual fortune. Perhaps his new assistant coach can help him find his way out of a seemingly cosmic bond.
One of Anthony Barry’s duties in his Uefa Pro License coaching course was to negotiate a staged hostage situation: The The theory is that the scenario provides essential communication skills for football coaches.
The task was to keep the (fictional) hostage alive and secure her release, and Barry succeeded.
« He was just great Calculated: He knew what to say at the right time and he handled the pressure very well. He was just very impressive. “
Eustace wasn’t the only man on this pro license course who was impressed with Barry: Frank Lampard and his then assistant Jody Morris were also there, and Lampard recruited Barry to coach the first team earlier this season for Chelsea.
Barry is a scouser who started his career in the Everton Youth Academy but played nearly 300 first-team games in England’s divisions with Yeovil, Fleetwood and Accrington Stanley.
The most famous game of his career was Yeovils Play -off final 2007 in League One at Wembley, which was lost 2-0 to a Blackpool team with a Wes Hoolahan.
Barry, left, played for Yeovil in the 2007 play-off final.
Source: Nigel French
Barry had to wait eleven seasons for this promotion from England’s third division and earned him as a coach. He retired at the age of 30 and was hired by Paul Cook in Wigan in 2017 as the youngest first-team coach in the country. It went pretty well: Wigan won the Premier League and beat Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City 100-point edition in the FA Cup.
When Cook spoke to the Athletic last year, he praised Barry’s analytical skills and recognized him as an important one Factor for the FA Cup, which led past City to the quarterfinals.
« I think the gaffer was planning to slowly break it, » says Noel Hunt, a member of the Wigan team this season.
“He makes the game easy to understand for people, he makes jobs and roles simple and easy to understand. He did little overtaking exercises, technical exercises, and finishing exercises, and then he was always a sounding board as someone to be confided in. “Barry spent three seasons at Wigan – where he completed his pro license qualification – and applied for the managerial job at Tranmere Rovers last summer. He missed a pretty good consolation prize in the form of a phone call from Lampard and was named assistant head coach at Chelsea earlier this season.
Although Jody Morris left when Lampard was fired in January, Barry was kept and he trained for a few days until Thomas Tuchel arrived. He was then approached for the vacant job of Fleetwood Town Manager, but turned it down because he wanted the experience to work under Tuchel. Barry has a lot of time on his side: he is only 34 years old.
Meanwhile, Tuchel sanctioned Barry’s role with Ireland in relation to the deal that brings him in line with his Chelsea obligations.
« You can be very happy, « says Tuchel The42. “You are very lucky, a top coach will join you and your coaches. We didn’t know him before, he was already here under Frank, but from the first moment he was a big part of our coaching team. «
Barry’s main responsibility at Chelsea is to organize their set pieces both offensively and defensively, but he helps in all other aspects of the game, says Tuchel.
» He has the highest quality when it comes to analyzing games and giving his opinion. He’s very comfortable on the court when he’s responsible for the exercises, and he’s very comfortable in front of the group. He’s responsible and the specialist for all the set pieces – so he does the video sessions and that Training for set pieces – and is the assistant for all other exercises. ”
Barry was set for the first time under Lampard and made a remarkable impression: Chelsea conceded 15 goals from dead ball situations last season – only the bottom three conceded more goals – but that number has been reduced to six this season with 10 games going.
They are well on their way to improving their attacking performance auc h to improve from set games. After scoring eleven goals last season, they have already scored nine goals this season.
Stephen Kenny will soon have reinforcements on the training ground.
Source: PA
Stephen Kenny pointed out that from the moment he took up his job, Ireland needed to improve their set games – after Shane Duffy scored from a corner against Bulgaria in September, Kenny noted, that this was the first corner Ireland had hit off in almost three years – and that his side didn’t hit as the point accentuated.
Barry co-authored a paper entitled « The Underrated Set: Analysis of football throw-ins during the English Premier League 2018-19 season, in which he contributed to a study of 16,154 throw-ins and found the teams that kept possession Most of their own throws ended up higher in the table. The least efficient throw-ins he found were the ones that went forward and long, so the days of Irish players throwing the ball on the line may be coming to an end.
The study concludes that attacking sides should throw the ball sideways or backwards for a better chance of holding the ball, while the defending side should push up when throwing an opponent and cut options around the taker to force him to hit the Line to throw.
Irish international Jack Byrne worked with Barry at Wigan for six months, examining his current Apoel teammate Joe Garner – also a Wigan alumnus – in the new coach.
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« Joe Garner had him at Wigan under Paul Cook for the entire season and he said he was absolutely brilliant, » says Byrne. « Joe said he works a lot on throw-ins and I think that’s where Lampard saw his presentation on the coaching page.
» He obviously impressed a lot of people. Anthony Barry is healthy, he has always been very good to me and very helpful, hopefully I’m looking forward to working with him again. From what Joe Garner told me, he said he was absolutely brilliant. You get a really good coach to replace a really good coach because Damien, I’m sure all the guys everywhere will say great, really great. «
High profile names like John O’Shea, Lee Carsley and Mark Kennedy were reportedly considered for the role that Damien Duff left vacant, but Kenny and the FAI ultimately picked the little-known Barry.
« Anthony is someone I know from his friendship with [Ireland’s chief scout and opposition analyst] Ruaidhrí Higgins, » says Stephen Kenny.
« They were on the Coventry City youth team together and shared their A- License made. I was aware of him and also when he was assisting Paul Cook at Wigan. «
Keith Andrews is Kenny’s assistant, so Barry will effectively be number three, but he has a sizable void to fill: Duff’s exit was full of mystery and rumors, but there was no doubt about his popularity with the players.
« I always wanted to do extra theses after training and he was always there and ready to go, » says Hunt. « He would always have something on my mind have what we can do.
« This season in Wigan we won the league and everyone had their role to play, but for me it didn’t matter if it was snowing, if I wanted to stay outside and do something extra, whatever it was, he’d be the first to say, « Come on, Noel, let’s go. »
« He’d put on something completely different, fun and game-related. As a coach, one detail was me Made him believe that we were always doing things related to the game s would always look forward to the next game: what they would do and what I could do.
« I continued this attention to detail for a striker with our strikers in Swindon last year. »
Barry is going ahead A potentially critical period for Stephen Kenny with Ireland as the World Cup qualifying campaign begins in Serbia, followed by the home game against Luxembourg, in which Ireland must win – and go scoreless – run.
The injuries are already increasing – Aaron Connolly , Adam Idah, James McCarthy, John Egan, Jack Byrne and Darren Randolph are either eccentric or highly dubious – but Barry’s arrival can be rare good news.
« It’s a pleasure to have him with you, us definitely don’t want to miss it, ”grins Tuchel. “So good for you, he’ll surely raise the level of coaching.”
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