In international football ALL that matters is the result. Especially in qualifying.
whoscored do heatmaps for internationals - https://www.whoscored.com/Matches/15...rtugal-Ireland
Select "Heatmaps" from the match centre about a third of the way down the page. By default all players are selected, which I find annoying, so click "select all" in both teams to clear it and then select the player you want to see. Ronaldo was all across the middle of the pitch in our half, with slightly more time spent coming in from their left hand side.
I found Hendrick and Cullen's maps to be interesting, both players seem to have covered the whole pitch
(snipped out the less relevant text from the quote - no offence intended)
I think you could write a full dissertation picking holes in individuals’ performances and in the team’s collective failings. We could have been 2 down after 25 mins and God knows what might have happened after that. Bazunu made a couple of nearly costly errors, Connolly fluffed some chances and seemed more intent in buying penalties than actually trying to score, and we failed to hold out from being 1-0 up with only minutes left, making avoidable mistakes. Nobody is blind to this, but it’s football: a classy team of cocksure thoroughbreds up against a team of mainly lower league players or players barely out of nappies in terms of this standard of football, a team totally out of luck and form and expected by most to take a hiding. Of course the better team will have more of the ball and the better chances.
But in the context of what we, or I at least, expected and wanted I thought it was something to behold to be honest. We barely touched the ball in the opening minutes and I feared we were facing an embarrassing defeat. But even before we gifted them the penalty Doherty started to lead by example, showing no fear and no mean ability breaking down the line and drawing fouls. On the other side Coleman put in a masterful shift. We were feeding our front two with increasing ease and they were turning their markers and starting to cause real trouble. We grew into the game by showing courage on the ball – something we’ve been crying out for for literally decades now, and we looked like a normal 21st century football team. O’Shea and Omobamidele looked born to play this level of football, the latter in particular was coolness personified. What a prospect. Cullen was magnificent I thought, a proper midfielder doing what proper midfielders do. McGrath looked confident. Idah showed some real quality and presence. Despite the hairy moments Bazunu delivered at the key times and I think you can tell that there’s great chemistry between him and the senior defenders.
The big takeaway for me from last night was huge satisfaction in seeing a team of mainly homegrown footballers - at least half of whom have only barely started their senior careers - being courageous and technically accomplished on the ball, organised without the ball and a side with pace. It’s what I’ve been wanting from an Irish team for years, and I think Kenny deserves credit.
The late goals hurt but nothing like Paris or Israel or Macedonia or any of them. I had already been realistic enough to think qualifying was a very remote prospect so no expectations were dashed unlike in previous late concessions. Of course the positives will fade away very quickly if we don’t follow up in the next two games.
Considering what he had to do, Hendrick's tackle was inch perfect, the tv replay showed that but VAR bizarrely just showed a 2 second long poor replay angle on a loop. The barge on Connolly was a valid penalty claim, he was hit before he got his foot to the ball and it's irrelevant that Connolly should have struck the ball a fraction earlier.
exactly was a penalty, yesterday was a scandal fai must intervene
It was the same after Wales' Nations League winner against us. We were dissecting who could have prevented the header across goal. Was it the CB's fault or Doherty, or was it the full back for failing to get the cross in or was it a midfielder for failing to stop the initial ball? That Egan eluded his marker for his goal didn't diminish it. Goals happen. Ronaldo just did what world class forwards do - he found space at precisely the right time. For me the real obvious mistake was a tired Hendrick making a tired clearance straight back to the Portuguese guy instead of finding touch. But most of the time he'd get away with it.
All goals are preventable in hindsight. I think we go OTT analysing the goals we concede sometimes. I'm not singling you out, you're only getting sucked into this conversation.
100%, and to save space, agree with your previous post too. There's a time and a place for cold analysis - there's still loads that we need to improve on. Now's not that time to do that. As you say, optimism is increased, and maybe our nadir was actually falling behind against Andorra :-)
Not a problem, I hold my hands up though, it probably is a pain to read. I'm literally the personification of the meme of "somebody said something wrong on the internet"!All goals are preventable in hindsight. I think we go OTT analysing the goals we concede sometimes. I'm not singling you out, you're only getting sucked into this conversation.
Here they come! It’s the charge of the “Thanks” Brigade!
I guess thats probably aimed at me too Why cant we temper the positive analysis, its actually refreshing that no ones got too carried away either way here. At the end of the day its another moral defeat, but its key the team move on from this and don't talk like Kenny has in the past about great past performances. We're still 0 points at the bottom of the table after 3 games, its the worst start I can remember in a campaign in all my time of watching. Portugal have been inconsistent in qualifying and an indifferent Euros, drawing with Serbia, going behind to both us and Luxenbourg. We had 27%/28 possession according to Google/ESPN. Portugal had 29 shots and around 2.5 times the amount of passes we had. We were completely dominated yet the only time we looked their equals was when we did attack, but chose to abandon that in the second half - i am aware fatigue played a part here.
There were some great individual performances, but if they aren't seen again on Saturday and Tuesday and wins then last night was futile(I mean the individual herculean performances).
I'm a bloke,I'm an ocker
And I really love your knockers,I'm a labourer by day,
I **** up all me pay,Watching footy on TV,
Just feed me more VB,Just pour my beer,And get my smokes, And go away
I'm not too inclined to look for defenders to blame for an overworked defence finally conceding two free headers to one of the best players and one of the very best headers of a ball I've ever seen. Tbh, we were fortunate that Portugal wasted some chances before that, one in particular that was blazed over from right in front of goal.
There are a lot of positives to take from it - the key thing now is to actually get that through to the players who must be utterly dejected. If we can have individual players playing so well against Portugal, there's no reason they can't do it against Azerbaijan. But there's also no reason they couldn't have done it against Luxembourg and other teams without Portugal's quality, yet they didn't.
Last night showed that when you get the very most out of this squad, there is indeed something substantial there to work with. Now the challenge is to consistently get that out of them.
Last edited by osarusan; 02/09/2021 at 9:48 AM.
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