'Stephen Kenny, Football Hipster'. It has a nice ring to it. We always suspected him of being one, really. How could he not be, the way his Dundalk team have been playing?
Stephen Kenny's Dundalk side have lit up the League of Ireland and the Europa League this season not just through getting positive results, but in the manner in which they have played football throughout their success.
Dundalk's style of football is very easy on the eye and obviously got the attention of Republic of Ireland manager Martin O'Neill as he had two Dundalk players (Daryl Horgan and Andy Boyle) in his squad for the crucial World Cup qualifying game away to Austria. So it was with intrigue that we listened to the response of Kenny when he was on 'Off the Ball' on Sunday and Joe Molloy asked him whether any great players or teams influenced him in his career.
And he didn't disappoint, giving a response that any footballing hipster would be proud of. Usually this sort of answer would result in rolled eyes from the non-hipster, but we'll make an exception for Stephen Kenny.
The era I grew up in, which would have been the '80s, watching the great French team of the '80s. I was not too young to have seen the Dutch team from the '70s, but certainly the great French team of the '80s were influential for me.
And all of the influx of Sky TV and Super Channel at that time. You had access to all the European leagues for the first time and that was real eye-opening. The great Real Madrid team of the time. And even all of the teams from different leagues, it was quite interesting to view all of the teams at that time.
Ironically, Dutch football, we're playing AZ (Alkmaar) next week, but Ajax, PSV and Feyenoord, all of those matches were on our screens every week which we would never have seen before.
You can't help but be influenced by those great teams.
Kenny opined that saying that a team 'doesn't have the players' to play in a certain style "gets people (managers) off the hook" when really they should just stick to what they believe in:
If you have conviction in your beliefs you have to aspire to be the best you can be, and aspire to...you want your players to express themselves in the way that they can.
There's no right or wrong. Everyone has different views. I just hope that the teams I put out reflect my own views.
You can listen to his full interview on 'Off the Ball' here.
