DENMARK COACH AGE Hareide professed himself satisfied with his side’s 0-0 draw with Ireland in Dublin last night, and predicted a similar result when Martin O’Neill’s men meet Wales on Tuesday.
In a game of limited chances, the Danes had 65% of the possession but could not make this dominance count, with just three shots on target over the course of the 90 minutes.
Denmark had enjoyed an emphatic 5-1 victory the last time the sides met in Dublin, just 11 months ago in a World Cup play-off, though this time around the visitors were missing their hat-trick hero from that night, Christian Eriksen.
Without the influential Tottenham playmaker, the Danes lacked the cutting edge and creativity which helped them reach the World Cup’s round of 16 last summer, only bowing out to eventual finalists Croatia on penalties.
But despite their inability to repeat last year’s five-star performance, Hareide still felt relatively content with the outcome.
“We played away and we know Ireland are hard to break down and after winning at home, we were satisfied with a draw in Dublin.
“We will have to leave it for Wales and Ireland to battle now and see who’s going to win the next one.”
Hareide added that the nature of the Nations League format meant extremely tight matches such as the one in the Aviva last night are inevitable.
“When you get three teams in a group, it is more or less like being in the final stages of the World Cup or the Euros, because you have so few matches. You have to play tactically,” he said.
When we beat Wales, we could easily figure out the ways to win the group, and one way was not to lose to Ireland and then leave it to Ireland and Wales to battle it out to get three points and we have both teams left.
“I don’t know — we had a similar situation yesterday between Croatia and England in the other group. At international level today, there are very, very few goals in it, really, so the teams are well organised, hard to break down and you might get matches like that.
“But there were a few chances tonight both ways, so it wasn’t that bad.”
The 65-year-old coach also noted the contrasting styles between the two teams, with the Danes keen to patiently build from the back and their opponents far more direct and heavily reliant on set pieces when attempting to get a goal.
“Normally, if you have the ball a lot of the time, you have a better chance to win games. But there have been teams who have become champions by not having the ball.
“There were different tactics from both sides. We chose to have the ball; Ireland couldn’t come into our bodies and use the physical presence of the team.
“They are strong on set-pieces, we knew that, and a lot of their possibilities came from set-pieces.”
With Denmark on four points in the group following last night’s stalemate and Wales on three, Tuesday’s clash against the latter is a must-win encounter for the Boys in Green. However, Hareide is doubtful as to whether they can come away with the three points.
“I think it will be very, very tight,” he said. “My bet is it’s going to be a draw. Hopefully.”
The Danish boss also commented on the incident that almost saw Jeff Hendrick give the hosts the lead in controversial circumstances. With Harry Arter down injured and the Danes looking to stop the play, the Burnley man robbed Thomas Delaney of possession and put the ball narrowly wide when one-on-one with Kasper Schmeichel.
I told the fourth official, the ref has to see that our players wanted to show fair play, because an Irish player went down and they let the Irish player run,” he said.
“The referee should have whistled and dropped the ball after that incident. It’s against the rules of football, because if there are any doubts or people being misled while trying to play fair play, the ref should be aware of that.
“The responsibility lies with the ref in this situation.”
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