Gavin Cooney

HEIMIR HALLGRIMSSON PRAISED his Irish players as he saw further progress in a 1-1 friendly draw against Senegal in Dublin. 

Ireland led at half-time through Kasey McAteer’s goal, but were denied a win by Ismalia Sarr’s late equaliser. 

“Our collective defence was good”, said the Irish manager. “We must recognise this is a world class team, unbeaten now in 21 games, 19 in the Fifa rankings. And there were times when we were defending without the ball we made them look quite average. We are happy they didn’t create too many goalscoring chances. Caoimh made one or two good saves but apart from that he didn’t need to do much, that is pleasing. 

“We needed to start on this, working on a shape that is now looking quite good. There are still a few areas, we have talked about needing to do some movements quicker, within the structure.

“To be able to play against such a strong attacking team, with so much individual quality, and not concede a lot of goalscoring chances.”

Hallgrimsson pointed to the low levels of confidence among his players when he first took the job, but says now they are climbing. 

“I think it is growing”, said Hallgrimsson when asked about confidence levels.

“The decisions at this level need to be quick. You need to be quick deciding what to do and act quickly. If you are too late you are always punished at this level. What I said about defence, being in structure, closing spaces: these things need to happen quicker.

“Once we repeat these things again and again it just gets it ahead and we showed that against a really good side again. We limited their chances of creating things against us and, let’s be honest, we are not one of the best teams in the world, and this is how we need to play against teams that will dominate possession.

“And we need to wait for our chances and take them when they come. So in this situation confidence is growing and it is a similar setup in September, playing the stronger team at home and then flying away to Luxembourg, like Hungary at home and then away to Armenia. So it is good preparation for September.

So that is confidence for me, to be able to play good teams without possession and doing that for longer periods of time. But again, conceding goals from crosses too many times and in this case we were too passive in the cross. We didn’t attack the ball when the cross came and it has happened before. That is a slight confidence thing.”

Hallgrimsson meanwhile praised his goalscorer Kasey McAteer, who showed Ireland have further depth among their right-sided attackers by scoring on his full Irish debut. 

““If you have watched Kasey he has got a run for Leicester at the end of the season so you can see his progress in his club and he brought that now into the national team”, said Hallgrimsson.

“That is always the answer you would like to have when you try out new players.

“It was his first start for Ireland, so a really good first start for him. No, he is a confident player on the ball. He has speed, good dribbling technique and if we can isolate him one-on-one that is his strength.

“He is just a clever footballer with a good footballing brain. Knows where to pass the ball etc.”

The Irish boss was sanguine too about the lack of VAR, which would likely have inspected and potentially disallowed the Senegal goal for an offside. Cheikh Sabaly stood in an offisde position occluding Kelleher’s view of a shot which the Irish goalkeeper saved brilliantly before Ismalia Sarr forced the rebound over the line. 

“VAR probably would have given it offside, but we knew VAR was not in house and we cannot complain. The referees did a really good job today, they had a really good flow to the game. I was really happy with the referees.”