Yeah and I like how he's comfortable pulling wide or coming through the middle. Can cross and play a through ball. Lovely variety. Tailor made for that position.
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Last second goal and winner for Ireland. Ollie O'Neill with a lovely goal. One on one with a defender. Had to shift in, shift out again and shift back in to bury it in the bottom corner. 18 years of age. He absolutely loved it.
Ireland seemed to play a counter attacking game in second half. Sweden had very few changes even though they seemed to have a lot of the territory. Ireland had chances for Ferry and Ferguson and an absolute sitter for Wright that he really did badly with- refused to put anything behind it to score from an open goal and an easy save for the keeper.
O'Neill the hero. And he looked good when he came on. Spun his man down the beautifully to set up a chance for Ferguson earlier. Then did the business with that goal. Good man.
If there's ever a time to score.. thats it 😅😅
Much better second half. All the subs had an impact. There was a lot more urgency second half and deserved the result. Sweden looked happy to take a point all game and it came back to bite them.
Both grandparents from Waterford and mother from Galway per a poster on YBIG. His post match interview was class too: https://twitter.com/RTEsoccer/status...680176133?s=20
Maybe we should give Crawford a bit of credit too? his substitutions changed the game for Ireland.
thought we played the game pretty much spot on. kept them at bay in the first half but still created a couple of half chances.
second half we pushed on and should've already been one up by the time we scored.
two sloppy passes aside i thought o'connor was back to his best.
overall it was quite impressive
Yes and no.
Good to win last night but whatever about Crawford's impact on the result, my sense is we are not getting the most out of the pool of players available to us. Take last night’s game – individually we have a stronger pool of players than Sweden. We’ve two players with 20 caps at this level and the team’s core are Championship-level players. The core of Sweden’s squad are mid-table players taken from their domestic league, the top teams of which are at best L1 standard. I thought Sweden had longish periods of control last night – I don’t think with the better quality we have we should be affording weaker opposition to dictate periods of control, especially when we are the home team.
And note also, we are the only team (so far) to drop points to Luxembourg and we needed last night’s win to just keep in touching distance of Sweden for qualification.
Sweden did have longish periods of control but it was like rope a dope. I don't think they really looked like scoring, aside from penalty shouts both ways in first half. Ireland had the better chances on the break, absorbed all the pressure in defence. Maybe the strategy wasn't the greatest given that we left it until literally the last second to take the win but there was method to the approach. I have felt that Kayode has been very isolated in the games I have seen. That was the case against last night. He has a thankless job up there. I'm not sure what the root cause of those gaps between our centre forward and the supporting cast are coming from. It might have a lot to do with Tierney and Wright being fairly poor last night. And I thought Bagan was limited in his passing too.
You're right though regarding the quality. It's great to see Irish players at club levels on par or above counterparts like Sweden and there was technical proficiency there too by a lot of our lads that they didn't match.
Just on Kayode, I thought Tierney was making great efforts to get close to him. Wright was a bit deeper bit I thought he was good overall. The problem with Kayode is, he's not a very good footballer. His movement is predictable, he doesn't make good runs or good decisions, I'd argue that he ends up isolating himself to an extent. Ferguson showed more in his short time on the pitch, admittedly he hasn't done much in previous appearances either, but given his age he looks a much better talent.
Some criticism of Crawford’s handling of Okoflex on this site - it feels that there is a valid point being made here......
https://greenmachinenick.medium.com/...n-7843ede9bd5e
Read the article and didn't agree with the overall premise of it. But then I thought to myself, what if Okoflex switched to Nigeria and never joined an Irish camp again- would we be referring to Crawford and this camp like the times Rice could have been capped by MON?
MON couldn't have capped Rice because Rice was never in a squad for a competitive game.
Unless Okoflex has found a third nationality then he only qualifies for us and Nigeria. If he wants to go play for Nigeria let him go play for Nigeria. Mipo Odubeko was killing it with West Ham's U23s last season and thought he was a superstar, think he's played more with Huddersfield B team than their first team since moving on loan. If Okoflex doesn't fancy waiting for his chance he can try breaking into Nigeria's attack which is much stronger than ours.
Crawfords comments were unusual, and its hard not to think theres a bit more to all this than meets the eye.
Not capping Rice in a competitive game was only a mistake in retrospect, at no point were there any calls for him to be promoted to the senior team.