New thread as the last thread seems to be broken.
it served a purpose as it showed the off the ball and second captains crowds and their disciples that Ireland were not good at the beautiful game but HH’s reign has showed us we should stick to what we are good at.
He brought through Ogbene as well but beyond that almost all of the players he brought through that have stuck around in the HH reign were obvious call ups
Extremely hopeful. I think the primary reason for their success this far is a few of them have played a decent amount of men's football.
O'Brien plays there for Everton although he's a giant.
We went from 34th to 58th during his reign.
A disaster. I like him though.
We should've just stuck with Mick.
Who’s our long term right back?
both
I really think we're just a CM and an AM/10 from being a good team.
I wonder if any of the U17s could step up in 2 or 3 years maybe.
do we need both results or just one to go out way ?
Scumbag and Bigot? how so?
Yep and people trying to claim that Kenny tanking our ranking didn't matter. Nows the cost.
I missed both matches so now I can't watch any more games since I'm obviously the jinx.
we’re top of pot c. It’s pot b we are trying to get into. The UEFA rankings decide the pots. The fifa rankings are a different thing and that’s what’s being talked about.
to get into pot b we need north Macedonia to get something in wales and we need to Austria to beat Bosnia in Vienna. I think anyway, maybe we need NM to beat wales but don’t think so
Why are Wales in pot 2 despite being 3rd in their group ?
Should that not go tk Macedonia and someone else move up tk the Nations League spot ?
Not sure. Albania I guess.
It's good though in general.
We should really be in the 40s at a minimum.
Kenny's reign screwed our ranking.
So no chance of climbing above any of the current pot C predictions.
It's difficult to know since other teams will gain points also, but if we assume no other team gains points (false assumption), then we'll move from 62nd to 57th.
Beating Portugal by 2 and Ronaldo getting sent off for being a btch.
Coming from behind twice away and winning with a last minute goal and a first ever away hat-trick.
It's totally unrealistic Ted Lasso stuff.
Chatbpt says 38 gained.
So we should move into the 50s at least.
If we do well in the playoffs eg winning the semi, we should be in the 40s.
I don't know anything about rankings and seedings but surely it'll help come the Euros.
Where should that put us in the rankings?
..
Man what a week its been. Still pretty speechless. After the Armenia game id consigned this campaign to the pile.
Portugal away felt like the usal bitter sweet game and i tuned into Thursdays game out of duty not desire.
Unbelievable scenes since. 5 goals in two games, where everything mattered. Winning away from home. Coming from behind twice. A last second winner to complete a hatrick. Proper fairy tale stuff.
Not even the most delusional irish fan could have dreamt it all up. All hail HH, i had him written off early.
Never so delighted to be so rediculously wrong in my life.
what?
Great result and great character shown by the players, delighted for them all. They really have turned things around in the last 2 matches, I don't think anyone saw this coming, at best I was hoping we would get it to the last day by hanging onto a draw against Portugal and then probably going down fighting against Hungary, but, to win both games is unbelievable. Hungary will be kicking themselves, probably the better team, but, who cares, result is all that matters, their time wasting came back to haunt them and our lads kept battling to the end
Anything from here on is a bonus, we will in all liklihood be outsiders in the play-offs, but, we're there now and in with a decent shot. Realistically that's all we could have hoped for at the beginning of the group stages, to get to the play-offs as Portugal were always going to top the group.
I think we should always be in the mix for the play-offs going into the last match of the group stages, even an outside chance, because as we've seen anything can happen, that's why the SK era was so disappointing, we didn't even get near the play-offs, and still some lads in here would prefer failure under SK than being at least competitive under HH. Regardless what happens in the play-offs, the team is in much better shape now, have a bit of belief in themselves and are competitive again, which is great to see. The last 2 matches almost feel like a euros or world cup tournament, pity the play-offs aren't in the next week!
I think that was the qualification for the 2010 world cup playoffs. The difference there was that there was nothing specified in the initial qualification protocol so it was initially assumed that it would be an open draw. Fifa decided to seed the playoffs by world rankings very late in the qualification process with the obvious intent of avoiding France/Portugal/Russia being drawn into the same tie. (We got France and the less said about Henry's handball, the better)
The protocol for these playoffs has been set in stone from day 1 of the qualifying campaign. Fifa/uefa don't really have much wiggle room to disregard it.
https://ia600804.us.archive.org/19/items/draw-procedures-for-the-uefa-preliminary-draw-for-the-fifa-world-cup-26/UEFA_Preliminary_Competition_for_the_FIFA_World_Cup_26_Additional_Competition_Information.pdf
I think usually they decide on the morning of the draw, depending who they want to qualify.
I definitely remember them making a decision in the past - post group stage -about playoff seedings that negatively affected us.
Orban hijacked football in Hungry and used it to spread his political ideology, he made himself part of the story.
Yeah looking back at the last playoffs they had a draw to see who gets home advantage. Fingers crossed we can sneak into Pot 2. Two potential home games will bring in a few quid.
Nothing more boring than the person who has to share political views in every situation as if he's being informative.
Going to Ireland matches for 23 years and that is the best day I have ever had. Bar none. Can't even begin to explain it. Unbelievable.
Thankfully no, if we start in pot 3 we'd have an away game for the first game alright, but home advantage for the second game would depend on the draw on Thursday.
We could end up going into the first game away, knowing that a win would see us into a home final.
