MARTIN O’NEILL ADMITS he dared to dream after Ireland went into half-time leading France in Lyon this afternoon.
Robbie Brady’s early penalty, the second fastest in European Championship history, had the hosts rattled as Ireland defended resolutely to give themselves a real chance of upsetting the odds.
However, the game was flipped on its head in the space of eight second half minutes thanks to Antoine Griezmann’s brace and the dismissal of Shane Duffy.
Speaking to RTÉ afterwards, O’Neill conceded he thought his side were going to pull off one of the great wins.
“I honestly thought for a few glorious moments we could win the game today,” he said.
“We’ve got off to a really great start and got the penalty deservedly so. We needed another seven or eight minutes in the second half to see it out. They put us on the back foot which you’d expect and they’ve scored the goal which has given them the momentum and even then at 1-1, we just lost a bit of concentration in the game which is very, very important for us.
“We did splendidly, absolutely splendidly. We knew they would come at us in the second half, they made the substitution but that aside it didn’t really matter.
“We were still comfortable within ourselves and we felt as if we could go on and win the game. Naturally we felt over the course of the second half we would have to withstand pressure and play without the ball for a few moments.
“What was just a little bit disappointing was that when we had it we just gave it away a wee bit too cheaply. The players put everything in.
“We took a little bit of time there in the dressing room because they don’t have any energy left, it was a brilliant effort from the team and supporters and I’m really sorry we couldn’t see that one through.”
As Ireland prepare to head home, there are so many positives to take from a campaign which saw several players, most notably Robbie Brady and Jeff Hendrick, come of age in a green jersey.
“It has been a really splendid tournament, the players have been terrific, the supporters have just been phenomenal,” O’Neill added.
“There are a number of players there who have come of age. We feel they belong but played as if they belong on this stage.”
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