Jonjoe Kenny: I Came to the Bundesliga to Push My Comfort Zone

Jonjoe Kenny celebrates after scoring Schalke’s third goal during the win over Hertha Berlin in August. (Getty Images)
Jonjoe Kenny celebrates after scoring Schalke’s third goal during the win over Hertha Berlin in August. (Getty Images)
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Jonjoe Kenny: I Came to the Bundesliga to Push My Comfort Zone

Jonjoe Kenny celebrates after scoring Schalke’s third goal during the win over Hertha Berlin in August. (Getty Images)
Jonjoe Kenny celebrates after scoring Schalke’s third goal during the win over Hertha Berlin in August. (Getty Images)

As Jonjoe Kenny remembers the sights and smells that defined his childhood it is tempting, more so at a time such as this, to close your eyes and travel back with him. He can tell what, with a few bumps here and there, is the textbook story of a local boy made good, and Everton games were the focal points throughout. Kenny grew up in Kirkdale, virtually on the doorstep of Goodison Park, and the glimpse of a buzzing County Road brought the kind of sensory assault that would leave thousands pining today.

“It’s about a five-minute walk round the corner,” Kenny says. “On matchdays going to the stadium it was always busy in our area. The chippies were packed, the pubs were packed, and when you’re walking to the game through it all there’s no better feeling. As a kid growing up, it was such a big thing.”

Many months will pass before youngsters hoping to follow in Kenny’s footsteps, which ultimately led to Everton’s first team, can feel the same immersion. But football is feeling its way towards a return and Kenny will be among the first to experience its new, hopefully transient, form. He is enjoying what has been something of a breakthrough season on loan at Schalke.

“I wanted to come here to prove a point to people, but also to myself,” says Kenny, who has established himself as David Wagner’s regular right-back and banished the frustration of featuring sporadically at Everton. “I don’t want to be a player who plays a couple of games and does well. I wasn’t happy to be sitting on the bench, or part of the team when I wasn’t playing. I want to play football and express what I’ve got.”

He has succeeded thanks in no small part to Wagner’s influence. As he rose through the Everton ranks, playing 40 times since his debut in May 2016, he became known as a capable, aggressive player who could work the flank effectively. But he has unlocked a more expressive side under the former Huddersfield manager, for whom he has started all but two league games.

“I knew I could get forward and show what I’ve got up the field as well. He gave me the confidence to do that and make different kinds of run, not just straight down the line, and it all just came together. I just needed to have the belief that I could get up there and deliver more chances.”

Kenny’s incursions have been a familiar feature of the Bundesliga’s sixth-placed side. His confidence had taken a hit during 2018-19, when Marco Silva afforded him only eight league starts. “I wasn’t performing as I wanted when I arrived here, in pre-season, so you think a lot, ‘Do people think I’m good?’, and all these things go through your head.” Things started to click, he thinks, in a friendly against Villarreal and the settling-in process was essentially complete when he scored an exceptional goal against Hertha Berlin on his fourth official appearance.

“I was always a homebird,” he says of the adjustment it took to step out of a life that, for so long, had been steeped in Everton. “I always wanted to stay at home with family and I wasn’t massive on going away on long trips when I was younger. Even though I’ve been on a lot with England [at youth levels], it wasn’t my favorite thing to do. But I haven’t been home for four months now and it changes you as a person. Not everything is easy and that’s exactly what I needed to progress: to come out of my comfort zone, learn a new language, learn how new people work.

“You have to adapt to what surrounds you. I found it was great to meet different personalities, different people, and get involved with everyone else.”

He has been pleasantly surprised at the progress in his German-speaking skills and it is no surprise that Schalke would like him to become part of the furniture. Links with other English sides have also sprung up, with Arsenal among those mentioned.

In an ideal world, you sense, he would like to continue his childhood fairytale. “It was perfect, the way it went for me when I was younger,” he says of that path from the nearby streets to the Goodison pitch. Occasionally the extent of it all would strike. “Being a home boy from Liverpool, born blue, you’re always going to feel a bit of pressure.” Criticism from the stands would sting but his slow progress owed more to the presence of Séamus Coleman, once a role model and now a good friend, ahead of him.

It would be tough, even if potentially necessary, to sever ties at 23. He recalls difficult times in academy football, such as feelings of envy when other players were pushed up an age group. “But you’re only a kid, only a baby really, so it’s a lot of demand on you.”

He was among a decorated crop who all “just loved the club”. Among them was Kieran Dowell, with whom he forged a formidable right-sided partnership in England’s Under-20 World Cup win three years ago. Dominic Calvert-Lewin, who had joined them from Sheffield United aged 19, scored the winner against Venezuela in the final; the pair are close and Kenny has enjoyed watching the striker’s towering form under Carlo Ancelotti.

“He’s always had everything really,” he says. “He looks a lot bigger and stronger now. The big thing was that he used to do a lot of running off the ball when he was younger, an unlimited amount of running into the channels. You’ve got to go into those areas but I think he’s learning that, to be at his best, he doesn’t have to make runs for the sake of it. He’s making clever runs.”

In part, he talks about Calvert-Lewin with such relish because he believes there are parallels with him. “He’s another player who has a lot of belief in himself, so it wasn’t really anything to worry about when he got a bit of stick,” Kenny says.

Kenny is speaking before the confirmation that Schalke’s return to action will be the small matter of a visit to Borussia Dortmund. He misses the supporters, while accepting there are “much more important things going on”, and enjoys the close-knit feel of the Gelsenkirchen club, whose earthiness reminds him of Everton. In the space of a few weeks he will have progressed from bingeing on Game of Thrones during lockdown to the oddly watered-down tension of this year’s first Revierderby, via physically distanced training sessions and regular health checks.

“I was ready, and would say I’d been ready for a long time,” he says of his attitude when boarding the plane to Germany last June. Now he aims to show it all over again.

The Guardian Sport



Monfils Outduels Fellow Frenchman Mpetshi Perricard in an Australian Open 1st-Round for the Ages

France's Gael Monfils celebrates victory against compatriot Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard during their men's singles match on day three of the Australian Open tennis tournament in Melbourne on January 14, 2025. (AFP)
France's Gael Monfils celebrates victory against compatriot Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard during their men's singles match on day three of the Australian Open tennis tournament in Melbourne on January 14, 2025. (AFP)
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Monfils Outduels Fellow Frenchman Mpetshi Perricard in an Australian Open 1st-Round for the Ages

France's Gael Monfils celebrates victory against compatriot Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard during their men's singles match on day three of the Australian Open tennis tournament in Melbourne on January 14, 2025. (AFP)
France's Gael Monfils celebrates victory against compatriot Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard during their men's singles match on day three of the Australian Open tennis tournament in Melbourne on January 14, 2025. (AFP)

The pragmatic pro in Gael Monfils would like to have finished off his first-round win in straight sets against up-and-coming fellow Frenchman Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard at the Australian Open.

The entertainer's instinct in him got a lot of value out of clinching it in five.

In a duel between the 38-year-old Monfils and 21-year-old Mpetshi Perricard, it was age, experience and endurance that outweighed power and youth — helping nullify one of the biggest serves in tennis.

Days after Monfils became the oldest player to win an ATP Tour title after beating Zizou Bergs the final in Auckland, New Zealand, Monfils wasted match points in the third set and on Mpetshi Perricard’s serve in the fifth before finally clinching a 7-6 (7), 6-3, 6-7 (6), 6-7 (5), 6-4 victory.

When he claimed his 13th tour title at 38 years, 132 days last weekend, he took over from Roger Federer, who was 38 years, 74 days old when he won the final tour title of his career in Switzerland.

Monfils and Mpetshi Perricard entered the match at opposite ends of the career spectrum, but share a passion for their sport. Both use between-the-legs shots at times during rallies, and sometimes take the unconventional approach to setting up points.

With a career record of 34-18 as the Australian Open, where he reached the quarterfinals in 2016 and 2022, Monfils had the advantage against a player on debut at Melbourne Park.

Mpetshi Perricard had never advanced beyond the first round at any major other than Wimbledon (where he reached the fourth round as a lucky loser last year) but he was seeded 30th after a breakout year in 2024 that included two titles.

Monfils, who has won more Grand Slam singles matches than any other French man, now also has a 20-19 win-loss record in five-set matches.

After winning the trophy in Auckland, he said "I’ve been enjoying myself since the first day I played tennis and (at) 60 years old I will still have this joy."

No. 13 Holger Rune also needed five sets to beat Zhang Zhizhen 4-6, 6-3, 6-4, 3-6, 6-4, No. 19 Karen Khachanov advanced over Adrian Mannarino, 7-6 (5), 6-3, 6-3, and 2022 semifinalist Matteo Berrettini beat Cameron Norrie 6-7 (4), 6-4, 6-1, 6-3.

No. 4 Taylor Fritz, runner-up at the US Open and the ATP Finals and part of the US team that won the United Cup last week, needed less than two hours for a 6-2, 6-0, 6-3 win over Jenson Brooksby in other Day 3 matches.

"Sometimes when you’re playing really good at the end of the year, that off-season almost a little bit kills the momentum," Fritz said, but "I’ve been playing pretty well since the start of the year. United Cup I played pretty good. There’s no reason for me not to be very confident."

No. 8 Emma Navarro needed 3 hours and 20 minutes and rallied from 5-3 down in the third set to beat fellow American Peyton Stearns 6-7 (5), 7-6 (5), 7-5 in the women’s first round.

By contrast, sixth-seeded Elena Rybakina overpowered 16-year-old Emerson Jones 6-1, 6-1 and No. 9 Daria Kasatkina advanced in straight sets.

A semifinalist at the US Open last year, Navarro was seeded in the top eight at a major for the first time and was completing a set of appearances on the center courts at the Grand Slams with her first appearance on Rod Laver Arena.

"One of the more unique matches I’ve played in a while, I think," Navarro said. "Definitely did not have my best stuff today. It was just relying a lot, I guess, on my grit and toughness and fight.

"She had a lot of moments there where she could have maybe closed it out or run away with it. I just tried to stay really tough."

Emma Raducanu, the 2021 US Open champion, had a 7-6 (4), 7-6 (2) win over No. 26-seeded Ekaterina Alexandrova out on Court 3, where a scattering of British flags fluttered in a light breeze.

In her first match since November, the 22-year-old British player had 15 double-faults, made 30 unforced errors and won just 30% of points on her second serve. But she was good enough in the big moments, with 22 winners and nine aces, to claw her way into the second round.

"It was difficult. It was quite hot out there, getting quite sunny. Obviously playing against a really experienced and seeded opponent who is playing great tennis," Raducanu said. "I’m very proud of how I fought and how I overcame certain situations in that match."

She’ll next play Amanda Anisimova, who had a 6-2, 6-3 win over Maria Carle.