Kieran McKenna has no regrets about leaving Ipswich Town when he did, saying he wanted to depart “in the best way possible” with the club back in the Premier League. The former manager realised the moment was right on the Portman Road pitch after QPR had been swept aside and promotion was assured — a third promotion in five years. “But standing out there, I felt this was probably time,” he says. “Another big victory, a full stadium, in front of my family and the fans. It was an amazing way to go out on a high.”
The thought had flickered earlier in the season that this might be his final campaign at Ipswich, but the Championship’s remorseless grind pushed it into the subconscious. Five months on, McKenna is comfortable with a decision finalised in June to cut things short while the going was so good. A voluntary career break was hard for many on the outside to fathom, he accepts. “But those who know my path and my values, the ones closest to me who know me really well, I think they understood why I wanted to step out and what the benefits were of having a period like this.”
The break has been family-first. McKenna’s son has recently become interested in golf, and sharing moments with loved ones — whether on the greens or travelling part of the summer along the East Anglian coastline in a camper van — were among the biggest reasons to pause a soaring career. At 40, after two decades in coaching, he wanted to appreciate life’s essentials while continuing his professional development at his own speed.
Football has not stopped calling. He says the phone has rung with proposals for his next move, but those overtures arrived “too soon, especially given the way I left Ipswich”. Leaving through the front door, a luxury rarely afforded, made him proud, and there is no desperation to leap back in. “I’m certainly in no rush,” he says. “I’m enjoying the time I’m having and hopefully an opportunity will come along that’s right. I have an idea what that would feel like but football doesn’t always follow your plan.”
Since early September, McKenna has dipped his toe back into the game. That has involved tuning back into watching and assessing matches, and travelling to spend time with Bayern Munich, the Wigan Warriors rugby team and Colorado Rapids, who are managed by his friend Matt Wells. He has also been working on foreign languages, topping up an already competent level of Spanish. This week he is visiting clubs in Spain, and next Wednesday he will begin work as a technical observer for Uefa when Shakhtar Donetsk play AEK Athens at Stamford Bridge. “I wanted to give myself the best possibility to learn before taking on the next challenge,” he says.
McKenna has repeatedly described 2025-26 as the hardest of his four-and-a-half seasons at Ipswich, a period in which he masterminded a rise from League One to the top flight that marked him among football’s hottest managerial properties. Last season brought heightened pressure: Ipswich had gone down and were expected to bounce back, even as the remarkably close-knit core that had propelled them through the divisions drifted away. In effect, he took two different teams to the top. “You can see how it could really have gone in two distinct directions,” he says, comparing the situation with the fall Luton experienced after a brief reacquaintance with the elite. “We had the feeling internally that if we didn’t work really hard to pull everyone together then it could have gone in a negative way.”
He pulled them over the line and reached the end of his own journey. McKenna had come close to departing more than once, but jumping ship earlier would have jarred. “I had a lot of different opportunities to leave, could have left in many different circumstances really,” he says. “But I was always aware I wanted to depart in the best way possible, with the club on a high, back in the Premier League and with a great chance to build for what will hopefully be a really successful period.”
The hardest aspect of his final day was looking down a camera and addressing supporters with a five-minute speech in which he did not attempt to suppress his emotion. He speaks warmly of goodbyes to coaching staff and colleagues, and says many friendships — particularly with members of the “really, really special team” he led to successive promotions — will be lifelong. The night before this interview, he spent most of a journey back from London speaking to one of them.
He laughs off the idea that he would have relished getting his hands on the £200m summer transfer spend — or a new training ground whose design he influenced — that appears to have given his successor, Gary O’Neil, a better shot at survival. If anything, McKenna suggests, it shows the club have begun their own new chapter. He also emphasises that the thought of potential reputational damage from a second relegation did not factor into his decision to quit. “It wasn’t about the thought of a worst-case scenario or what could go wrong,” he says.
For McKenna, it was about prioritising life. He and his wife chose to stay in Ipswich, where their two children attend school, in a family home a brisk half-hour walk from Portman Road. Sir Alf Ramsey and Sir Bobby Robson kept homes nearby after moving upwards; McKenna has hero status in the area too. He keeps a low profile and chooses socialising locations judiciously, but the affection of the town and county often surfaces. “Everyone is respectful; all we get is people coming up telling the story of how much the last few years have meant for them, their family and their friends, and wishing me the best,” he says. “Moving down here together, going all in, making ourselves part of this community, it’s been another of the really positive things.”
The rhythms of daily life have changed. The early-morning drives to the training ground have not become muscle memory. “You’d think it might, but it’s just a different life,” he says. “You’re not setting the alarm for 5.30am and driving there in the dark. You’re getting up with the kids and having breakfast with them, and you’re around when they go to bed. Although the geography is the same, the life is different.”
McKenna does not believe the heady half-decade has changed a grounded personality honed in rural County Fermanagh. “I probably feel about 20 years older,” he says. “But my friends at home were telling me in the summer that I haven’t changed since I was 10.” He adds that he could not have arrived at Ipswich with a better background as a coach, yet if he had been given a list of things he would have to deal with over the next five years he would not have believed it. “After going through so many things you’re wiser for the experience.”
Taking a breather when the world is your oyster remains vanishingly rare in football management. McKenna accepts it may not suit everyone. “But what’s right for me, after two decades coaching, might be different for a manager who only stopped playing three years ago,” he says. “It’s been a massive body of work. You leave United, pick your bags up, get in the car and five-and-a-half hours later you’re in Ipswich. At 35 you’re leaving your family behind, checking into a hotel 10 days before Christmas; you absolutely throw yourself into the job for the next four and a half years and the family do the same. I want to enjoy the time we have now, take this period to reflect and be in the best position I can for the next role.”
That next role remains a matter of speculation. McKenna has been linked with potential vacancies at Celtic and his old employers Spurs, and his name will circulate once the season’s sackings start, although Ipswich will be owed a sizeable fee for any role he takes this year. He knows what he wants. “I’m always going to want to be somewhere where I can improve players, play attacking football and win games,” he says. “But beyond that I’m a manager who wants to enjoy having that connection with a club, a community, trying to build something memorable. It was a really special opportunity at Ipswich and you want to do that again in your career. But you have to be ready to come in somewhere and get some short-term success as well.”
The chance will surely arise soon; it does not take a giant leap to imagine McKenna in a Champions League dugout in the next few years if the stars align. Until then, the self-growth will continue, and there will always be dispatches from Portman Road, where his brother and children are regulars. McKenna would rather look forward and will not beat that path for now. “I think that’ll be some way down the line,” he says. “They’re cracking on with the season. There’s nothing that can lessen my pride and love for everything we’ve been through. Hopefully I’ll be back in the stadium as an old hand, and some of the people will remember the times we had.” They are unlikely to forget, and McKenna’s aim is that at least one other set of supporters will have felt the magic too.