FOLLOWING IRELAND’S 1-1 draw with 10-man Costa Rica in the early hours of Saturday morning, manager Martin O’Neill admitted his side may haven gotten “casual” following Giancarlo Gonzalez’ 41st minute red card.
“I thought that we got a really good goal by Kevin Doyle and did really fine in the first half of the match, dealing with anything they threw at us reasonably comfortably.
“Then they had the man sent off and I don’t know if we got casual but we had a really poor spell in the first fifteen minutes of the second half culminating with the penalty.”
The Ireland boss admitted his players may have taken longer than he’d have liked to adapt to playing against 10-men.
“It took us time to get to grips and they played much better with the ten men that the eleven. It was their last chance before the world cup and we a few problems we didn’t deal with in the manner we did against Italy.”
One reason cited by the 62-year old was the number of changes he made from that draw with Italy last weekend.
“Obviously I made a lot of changes in the team and that may have led to us being a bit disjointed. I felt in that fifteen minute spell we should have got out and close them down a bit better than we did.”
O’Neill was, however, full of praise for Costa Rica’s Joel Campbell.
““He was really excellent in the second half but I think that didn’t come as any surprise because of his exploits in the Champions League and he looks as if he has a really grand future.
“Costa Rica will look to him as a main player coming up and I thought their second half performance with ten men was really excellent. Much better than they did do with eleven.”
