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Interim manager Noel King on the sideline tonight. INPHO/Donall Farmer
come at the king

Noel King: Ireland players can be proud of themselves despite three-goal drubbing

Ireland were outclassed by the Mannschaft on King’s big night.

NOEL KING TOOK charge of the county’s senior team for the first time tonight in Cologne.

And though the record books will show the bald facts — a 3-0 defeat — the former St Pat’s boss insists there’s plenty of which to be proud.

“The third goal was a killer wasn’t it?” he said afterwards on RTE.

“It looks really poor now, 3-0. In terms of ourselves I thought we acquitted ourselves well, I thought we were tight, we were compact, they had a large possession of the ball obviously. We needed to counter, I thought we countered five or six times and created five or six chances. We did create really good chances so you have to be happy with that.

“Other times we didn’t quite counter as well as we could. These are a very, very good team. Maybe I could have made changes, even when we had the corner we could have taken a short corner and settled for two but that’s ridiculous. If we scored with the last corner it would have been 2-1 and everyone would have been happy with that.”

Asked about a team he picked which contained no recognised winger, King responded: “I think there was only player played out of position, but he’s played there as a young guy and he’s played there not so long ago as well. But when you play Germany you’re going to be working hard for the entire game, that’s what we did, I thought we were solid enough.

“The deflection was unfortunate for the first goal and the second goal we vacated the backline. And the last one was just hard to take. But overall, in terms of application, in terms of making progress, the boys tried very, very hard.

“They really put their whole effort into it, I couldn’t make a change because I was happy with the way we were and we were creating chances. So overall I’m not too displeased, I’m sick about losing and I’m sick about the scoreline but them boys really tried hard for Ireland. They can be proud of themselves tonight.”

King now turns his attention to the dead rubber against Kazakhstan in Dublin on Tuesday.

How did you think he did?

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How the Ireland players rated against Germany tonight

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