Stephen Kenny impressed by Michael Obafemi improvement as striker earns recall

Republic of Ireland boss Stephen Kenny has moved to inject pace and firepower into his team ahead of June’s Nations League fixtures.

Kenny has included Swansea striker Michael Obafemi, as well as handing first senior call-ups to Blackpool winger CJ Hamilton and Derby counterpart Festy Ebosele, in a 27-man party for the games against Armenia, Ukraine and Scotland.

Then at Southampton, Obafemi made his senior debut under Martin O’Neill as an 18-year-old substitute in Denmark in November 2018 but has had to remain patient since, and Under-21s boss Jim Crawford revealed the frontman had declined a call-up for his team in March.

However, the now 21-year-old, who joined the Swans in a £1.5million switch in August last year, scored 11 times in his last 19 games of the Sky Bet Championship season, and that did not go unnoticed by Kenny.

The Ireland boss said: “It’s the first time in his career, Michael, that he’s had a run of consecutive games.

“It’s very hard for young players in the Premier League to get that, just the standard is so high and the squads are so big, so the move to Swansea, which is a great club and a great platform to really do well in the Championship, you can see really the improvement in his play.

“I’ve seen aspects of his play that I haven’t seen previously with Swansea – his hold-up play has really come on well and he’s shown great football intelligence allied to the natural speed that he’s got.

“The performances I’ve seen recently with Swansea are better than I’ve ever seen from him, so his rate of improvement has been very high.”

Eyebrows were raised when Crawford claimed he had been told Obafemi, who tweeted the single word “Interesting” after being left out of Kenny’s first squad in August 2020, saw