THE WEEK’S BUILD up to tonight’s World Cup qualifier with Portugal started on Monday with an introduction to a player most of us had never heard of.

It ended yesterday by speaking to the manager who might soon become a distant memory.

Heimir Hallgrímsson said from the moment he was announced as Stephen Kenny’s successor in July 2024 that it’s all about delivering results. Unless he pulls out two of the most seismic in the recent history of Irish football, then we are approaching the end of days for the affable and respectful Icelander.

Matters in the earlier game this afternoon between Armenia and Hungary will provide further clarity on Ireland’s situation. A draw in Yerevan would mean the Boys in Green remain in third place, and give them scope to lose to Portugal, knowing that they would still be facing a must-win game in Budapest for the play-off spot.

Hallgrímsson has always stressed that he wanted to make sure he “leaves the green jersey in a better place” from his time in charge. It took eight months to appoint him and his 10 months at the helm might just be quickly forgotten unless there is a dramatic, era-defining crescendo.

Perhaps Kevin O’Toole’s call-up is part of his thinking for a future he might not be a part of, and if the unheralded 26-year-old left wing back from New York City FC is about to blossom in his career, then it will be viewed as a very welcome goodbye gift.

Discussing such matters in this way at the business end of the qualifying campaign is not how this was supposed to go, though.

Hallgrímsson’s planning has always been with a view to being at next summer’s World Cup. It’s why he rested numerous first-choice operators for the summer friendlies and, coming into the start of the qualifying group in September, he spoke with a renewed sense of confidence and purpose that was matched by players and staff.

And then the football started. Two-nil down inside 15 minutes at home to Hungary, their recovery was aided by a red card early in the second half. A disastrous defeat away to Armenia followed and, when asked to reflect on what this campaign has taught him about his players on the eve of facing Portugal for a second time, Hallgrímsson first mentioned “inconsistency” and then admitted that the 2-1 loss in Yerevan “kind of haunts” them.

The manager cited the manner of the performance and outcome as “probably the negative thing in all of this journey”, but that “apart from that game, I am pretty happy with how we have played. I think we are finding our identity better and better.”

It’s taken Hallgrímsson the guts of a year to land on the same five-at-the-back foundation which Kenny had turned to long before. That identity needed to be crystallised far sooner for a team like Ireland to arrive at this point truly capable of seizing their own kind of glory.

Very little about the way they have navigated this group so far suggests they are building towards that over the next few days. A sense of drift and vulnerability pervades, and the O’Toole call-up is a case in point.

Given how options at left back for tonight’s game have been reduced by injuries to Robbie Brady and Callum O’Dowda (Ryan Manning is suspended and will return at the weekend), it’s logical to require a reinforcement of some kind.

O’Toole is a complete bolter, a 26-year-old who has performed reasonably adequately for New York City but has never been in the conversation for a place in the squad.

That’s not just because so few even knew his name. He wasn’t spoken about or flagged as a potential recruit, although this has been in the works since February when he first spoke with Hallgrímsson.

O’Toole was first up for media duty on Monday morning, after an initiation process on the training pitch that saw him thrown up against Mikey Johnston in a series one-v-one exercises.

He spoke with an affable American zeal, discussing his sister who plays for Treaty United, his aunt who will be in the Aviva Stadium tonight, and golf trips to the K Club and Doonbeg – the latter course owned by American President Donald Trump.

O’Toole provided the brief USP of his CV, informing us he was an athletic, box-to-box defender with a good engine who enjoyed duels. Hallgrímsson later informed us that James McClean was considered as an emergency recruit but was ruled out due to lack of game time for Wrexham in recent weeks.

In fairness, given Dara O’Shea, Liam Scales and Seamus Coleman can all play at left back, it’s not as if O’Toole is likely to start.

He told us about his grandfather who left Dublin for New York in the 1950s, arriving in the United States to make a better life and now looking down with pride at his grandson earning a call-up for the country he left behind.

It was all very pleasant and romantic and wistful — perhaps a follow-up novel in it for the masterful Colm Tóibín — but to be honest, it wasn’t the kind of stuff you expected to be hearing on a week like this.

Maybe it would have hit the spot last summer, when O’Toole was already on the radar but not yet qualified for friendlies with Senegal and Luxembourg. That was the time for such a story to be enjoyed in more depth, not when Cristian Ronaldo leads Portugal to Dublin.

Hallgrímsson says Ronaldo makes Portugal “unique” because they never coast in a game in which he is on the pitch in order to provide him with chances to score. He has 143 international goals and the power of his standing in the game with officials was clear in Lisbon.

“Obviously it’s up to the referee if he takes part in a play, but the thing in Portugal, he was not only controlling the referee, he was controlling the whole stadium so all the fans supported his actions and the referee just kind of played along,” Hallgrímsson said.

“I hope it will be the vice versa now we are in the Aviva, but obviously a player shouldn’t be refereeing, it should be the officials doing the refereeing. I hope the people here will see that and recognise that if they want to affect the game, they shouldn’t at least affect the referee.”

Ireland will play in exactly the same way they did in Lisbon. There will be five at the back, Troy Parrott will most likely lead the line, and the midfield will be anchored by Josh Cullen with Jack Taylor possibly included alongside him due to Jayson Molumby’s suspension.

“You either win or learn, and we’ve done a lot of learning,” centre back Dara O’Shea said in the pre-match press conference.

“I hope the lessons we’ve learned have put us in a better place. We really want to have success for the country, especially this group. We’ve been through some tough times and I hope we’re in a better place from it. As long as we’ve learnt the lessons we’ve suffered along the journey, we’re in a good place.”

Delivering a positive result against Portugal would be manna from heaven for a side desperately trying to escape purgatory.

Tonight - Republic of Ireland v Portugal, 7.45pm, RTÉ 2