Republic of Ireland v Hungary - Saturday, 6 September 2025 - 2026 World Cup Qualifier

[SkStu]

There’s a guy I’ve known since i was about 4 years old who was a close family friend and friend of his late father - along with being a big Liverpool and Ireland fan (from the north). I can’t remember his exactly quote now but it was something along the lines of “I can’t believe how the FAI have ****ed this up and how he’s not playing for Ireland”. It was certainly his belief that from a very very young age, it was very clear that Conor was the brightest prospect to come out of the north since Norman Whiteside and it would have been very easy to have courted him and made him feel wanted at an early age while the IFA were doing the same thing. And if they had done that, he would have chosen to have played for us. I’ve never heard anything to contradict that.

Whats your stance on fast tracking, es? For example, Moorhouse. Hes with us. Hes close to good enough now (for us) by all accounts. I know capping him now wouldnt tie him fully (Rice rules still apply, right?) - but it would make him ours. Make him harder to lose. NI/Wales all move quickly and aggressively on these guys. We seem to kick tyres way too much.

[pineapple stu]

I think people forget how far we have fallen. Our seeding was destroyed by a man (and his merry band of followers) pushing an agenda to play football a certain way at the expense of actually winning games and maintaining our position in European football. It will take years to rebuild our seeding back to where it was.

I think that's a little bit harsh - there's absolutely a large element of our fall that's down to having a squad that's been getting noticeably poorer year-on-year for the last 20 years or so.

Kenny absolutely had his faults, but when he had to pick League 1 players or kids who were a couple of years before being club-ready, let alone international-ready, then there's not much he can do about that. You can't make a silk purse from a sow's ear (but then you don't have to make what Kenny made out of it either)

I remember in the early days of the Kenny reign saying he should call up McGeady when he had a little Indian summer at Sunderland - I think he had a bit of experience and creativity that we were really badly lacking at times. Maybe it's a black mark against Kenny that he never called McGeady up because he was so focussed on the younger players instead - but it's way more an indictment of our coaching here for decades that we'd gotten to a stage where a decent 35-year-old League One player was a genuine option for us because we had so few other options.

Our seeding has been destroyed by years of neglect at domestic level which has us scrounging around now for any eligible player who shows a turn of form but has been overlooked by other countries (Sammie, Cannon, Barry) - and that's no way to rebuild our seeding unfortunately.

[Eirambler]

Without derailing another match thread with the pro-anti-Kenny contributions, do you afford Kenny any slack whatsoever? In the context of picking and continuing to pick the players who are both mainstays and seasoned internationals now.

I would cut him a little bit of slack to the extent that he wasn't dealt a good hand in terms of the quality of players we had available at the time.

However, in consciously deciding to pull apart the McCarthy 2.0 team (limited and all as it was) and bringing in his young guns who were nowhere near ready to perform at that level, he made about as bad a job of the situation as it was possible to make.

From 2020 to 2023 we needed a wise old hand to guide us through what was always going to be a rough patch and steadily bring through some new faces as and when the time was right. Instead we got Stephen Kenny. The players he brought through would mostly have come through anyway (except for the occasional mad-cap pick like CJ Hamilton). They'd probably have been better served being introduced more slowly by a McCarthy type of manager into a more experienced, defensively set up team. It would likely have protected our ranking and seeding to some extent also.

Incidentally I saw some quotes this week from the Ireland camp about how much the players were enjoying the "clear and concise" instructions they were being given by the current management. Rightly or wrongly I took it as a bit of a subtle dig at Kenny, clear and concise were certainly not words I would ever have associated with him.

Maybe it was for the best that his time in charge coincided with one of our weakest ever periods in terms of squad strength. Possibly that limited the damage he could do to some extent, as we weren't going to qualify for anything anyway. But he absolutely hammered our seeding to a level it didn't need to drop to and we're paying the price for it now despite having a better team on the park.

Just one edit to my above comments on reflection - I actually think we might have squeezed into Euro 2020+1 under McCarthy. His solid, pragmatic style might have gotten us past Slovakia and the north. We'd have done nothing of note at the finals though.

[Diggs246]

Stephen didn't know when to make a substitution or tactically change formation and didn't even know how to conduct an interview.

He was extremely good at finding ways to lose a football match.

Can we just move on and look forward to tomorrow

I'm excited, I'm nervous and really confident we can win this football game tomorrow

[Kingdom]

Fair play lads, that was as civil as could be expected.

***
I'm excited, very nervous but not confident because I think we're over-egging average performances in 1) end-of-season friendlies against a) a second-string African side, and b) a **** Luxembourg side; 2) dogged rather than good performances against an awful Bulgarian side; and 3) we're missing Parrott.

Of course I want a positive result, but depending on team selection, I can see the ball being moved through us quickly early in the game and if we don't get a good start and get our foot on the ball a bit, our heads could be spinning - without trying to over-egg how good Hungary are (they aren't that good).

Go Ireland!

[Razors left peg]

I think its fair to say that even though Hallgrimsson has been in the job for a while now, we dont have a firm idea of what to expect from him and his teams. We have shown signs of improvement but we still have to see what it looks like in a game that actually matters. I dont think we have over egged the previous performances because we were pretty good at times and you can only judge on what we've seen.

Im cautiously optimistic

[Acornvilla]

Gald we still have time for another Kenny retrospective, a wonderful tradition, I hope it continues for decades to come.

I'm also cautiously optimistic about tomorrow. A big pity Parrott is out, but this is the strongest team we have had since the End of Mick/beginning of bossman Steo era's. There's talent and experience, a solid enough coaching ticket. Hungary a bit off their peak, if it's ever going to happen it's now!

I think there's still a lot of growth and improving in some of our guys mid 20's and under, but we deserve something good to happen for once don't we?

[nigel-harps1954]

There’s a guy I’ve known since i was about 4 years old who was a close family friend and friend of his late father - along with being a big Liverpool and Ireland fan (from the north). I can’t remember his exactly quote now but it was something along the lines of “I can’t believe how the FAI have ****ed this up and how he’s not playing for Ireland”. It was certainly his belief that from a very very young age, it was very clear that Conor was the brightest prospect to come out of the north since Norman Whiteside and it would have been very easy to have courted him and made him feel wanted at an early age while the IFA were doing the same thing. And if they had done that, he would have chosen to have played for us. I’ve never heard anything to contradict that.

Not to derail further, but from what I understand, he was committed only to Northern Ireland from a very young age and had no interest whatsoever in changing alliegance, which is information from people who know the lad himself and who have coached him at underage level. He was really well treated all through the youth ranks and through the Club NI process, and he's a fiercly loyal young fella to those who looked after him.

[John83]

Some more commentary from 88 on RTE. These are big comments from the management team. I suppose it probably falls into the bracket of collective psychology and getting the positivity flowing.
Irish media is a bit dramatic. Wembley was low, but to call it a humiliation...I dunno, it seems harsh to some degree. We were utterly, utterly comfortable until a moment of poor decision-making turned the game.

https://www.rte.ie/sport/soccer/2025...-hallgrimsson/

There's only one set of people I know of who use "88" to refer to "HH" and they're about as welcome as a gas bill attached to a neo nazi.

[Eirambler]

From what I can tell, ourselves and Hungary are the last two teams worldwide to start our World Cup campaign (Armenia and Portugal kick off at 5pm). There are European teams that have already played five games and the South American teams have all played 17 games and we're finally getting going now - it's a strange system.

[liamoo11]

From what I can tell, ourselves and Hungary are the last two teams worldwide to start our World Cup campaign (Armenia and Portugal kick off at 5pm). There are European teams that have already played five games and the South American teams have all played 17 games and we're finally getting going now - it's a strange system.

That's mad. It's scary how quick our world Cup campaign is going to be over for good or bad

[liamoo11]

Not to derail further, but from what I understand, he was committed only to Northern Ireland from a very young age and had no interest whatsoever in changing alliegance, which is information from people who know the lad himself and who have coached him at underage level. He was really well treated all through the youth ranks and through the Club NI process, and he's a fiercly loyal young fella to those who looked after him.

I never understand what really well treated means. He was one of the top talents in his age group so of course he was well treated. Clearly he identifies as northern irish and wants to represent the North. That's his decision it's not anyone's fault on the FAI side

[pineapple stu]

That's mad. It's scary how quick our world Cup campaign is going to be over for good or bad

It's a bit crappy, isn't it? Ten weeks and that's it. A bad injury and a key player could miss the lot

Compare that to the longer groups - 10/12 games - which would be over a year and give you more to look forward to

[pineapple stu]

1-0 Portugal after 10 minutes

Wasn't expecting anything from that game, but that should be the start of a big Portugal win

[Eirambler]

0-3 at half time. Whatever happens tonight, we really have to be putting Armenia away in Yerevan.

[SkStu]

0-3 at half time. Whatever happens tonight, we really have to be putting Armenia away in Yerevan.

Yeah, watched the first half and said the same to a few others. No excuse not to beat these guys away and exact revenge for 2022.

[Eirambler]

I think McAteer will be very close after June. Question might be whether HH considers Manning to be strong enough defensively to play left back, or whether he wants to move Doherty across or play Scales there.

Kelleher
O'Brien Collins O'Shea Doherty
Cullen Knight
McAteer Azaz Manning
Ferguson

Different ways you can interpret the setup of the starting team. One is that it's the above, other than Szmodics starting instead of McAteer. Interesting that he has not picked any out and out wingers, looking to put more bodies into the middle perhaps.

[pineapple stu]

0-3 at half time. Whatever happens tonight, we really have to be putting Armenia away in Yerevan.

You'd hope Portugal are good to win all six games too and help our playoff chances

[mark12345]

Different ways you can interpret the setup of the starting team. One is that it's the above, other than Szmodics starting instead of McAteer. Interesting that he has not picked any out and out wingers, looking to put more bodies into the middle perhaps.

No Mikey Johnson or Chio or Szmodics in starting eleven? And surely Manning is left back, not left half? Doherty out of position it looks like

[Eirambler]

No Mikey Johnson or Chio or Szmodics in starting eleven? And surely Manning is left back, not left half? Doherty out of position it looks like

Could also be a 3-5-2/5-3-2 setup with Collins doing the stepping into midfield thing again. Should keep the Hungarians guessing right up to kickoff anyway.

Szmodics is starting by the way.