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Stephen Kenny will be handed his new Ireland deal before the Belgium game, says FAI CEO

STEPHEN KENNY and his team will be handed their new Ireland contract "well before" March's friendly with Belgium, said FAI CEO Jonathan Hill.

Kenny's deal runs out in the summer and Hill was mandated by the FAI board at the end of November to negotiate an extension to his current deal.

Manager Stephen Kenny briefs players during last night's training session at The Hive

Hill said:

“The good thing about the overall situation is we know Stephen wants to continue to be the coach of the senior men’s team, we want him to be the coach of the senior men’s team moving forward so we’re just in that stage of any negotiation and this is actually a contract extension to a degree where we’re talking through the parameters of that”, said Hill.

“We have him under contract until July 2022, we said we would do this in the right timetable and make sure all of those issues are talked through.

We are very comfortable. We'll have an announcement well before the Belgium game.”

The new deal is said to run through Ireland's Euro 2024 qualification campaign and Kenny said that one or two things to sort” before the deal is completed.

Hill also said that the delay in contract talks were not because of the size of Kenny's backroom staff, last week Anthony Barry left to join Belgium in a huge blow to Ireland.

He congratulated the former League of Ireland coach for bringing in Barry, who has a very high ceiling in football.

“I think Stephen should actually be congratulated for finding somebody of Anthony’s quality, to be honest”, said Hill.

“He wanted to do the job and I think he did a brilliant job in relation to moving us forward from a coaching perspective. I’d rather you be more glass half full in relation to the Anthony Barry period rather than glass half empty in relation to it. Stephen will find someone to replace him, a bloody good coach. That’s not an issue.”

At the launch of their new strategy document, chairman Roy Barrett defended the decision to join the bid to host Euro 2028 while Stephen Kenny's contract negotiations were touched on, @CorkTOD reports from Abbotstown pic.twitter.com/O4O5WcJa30

— RTÉ Soccer (@RTEsoccer) February 8, 2022