Gavin Cooney

HEIMIR HALLGRIMSSON HOPES his Ireland side have perfectly timed their run to the World Cup play-offs, as they head to Budapest for a must-win finale. 

Ireland’s fate remains in their own hands, although only a win over Hungary on Sunday will be enough for Ireland to finish second in their group and progress to the play-offs next March.

A September defeat away to Armenia (World Ranking: 105) and Thursday’s victory over Portugal (World Ranking: 5) was not how anyone imagined Ireland would pace themselves ahead of the campaign’s final sprint, but Hallgrimsson is nonetheless happy with where his players now stand. 

“Exactly”, replied the Irish manager when asked if the pressure is now on Hungary on Sunday, who will seal a play-off with a draw. 

“They have been leading. Like we talked about when we started this campaign, we wanted to have at least for points from the first camp and be leading from there. But we have been chasing, and we can overtake them on the last day of the competition.” 

Hallgrimsson also agreed with an assertion that Hungary may now view Ireland in a different light following victory over Portugal. 

“I guess so, probably this is a result people will look at and say, ‘Whew, this is maybe a changed team, or whatever”, said Hallgrimsson. 

His analysis of Ireland’s remarkable victory on Thursday was calm and unimpeachably rational. 

“We knew how they would play against a low-block defence”, Hallgrimsson said of Portugal. 

“When you play in low-block, it’s like being a snake: you lure the opponents higher. They have such an attacking team – everybody likes to score – and that just opens more than half a pitch behind them. And we have Chieo [Ogbene], one of the fastest players, and then Troy and Finn as well, clever guys using the space behind.

“So what happens when you have a lot of ball possession and a lot of attacking players, you lose balance. They did that on a few occasions and we used that.

“It was a game that we played in our heads, and this is kind of the game plan we wanted, and it just played out that way. So it’s nothing that we needed to be worried about, just keeping the players switched on. That was our focus, so I think our nerves were quite okay.” 

But then asked how Ireland can lurch from losing to Armenia to beating Portugal, Hallgrimsson reached for an older adage. 

“That’s football. Like life, it’s never a straight line. This beautiful game is like this, it’s the only sport in the world that a third division club can beat the Premier League team. It’s because there is a low amount of scores in this game, that is why everyone loves it. Once we can create a team that doesn’t concede a lot of goals, we always increase our chance to win.”

The Irish players’ celebrations at full-time were somewhat restrained, with all singing from the same post-match hymn sheet: they had only reached the halfway point of this defining week. 

Many of the players did, however, make reference to the fact the victory over Portugal had been a long time coming: for everyone bar Seamus Coleman, it was their first glorious night at the Aviva Stadium after year upon year of misery and disappointment. 

“We spoke after the game: it’s okay to be happy, but remember why we achieved this, what made this win. It was collective work, it was teamwork; it was hard work and discipline. Focus and discipline, that created this. So just don’t enjoy winning and having three points, remember what made this win, that’s the most important thing. That’s the most important goal [going to] Hungary.

“After this game, of course there’s belief. And let’s use this in a positive way, let’s use this to regain as much energy as we can. I think winning always helps recovery.

“Sometimes it’s just better to go and need to win, rather than a draw is enough. You probably become passive when that happens.”