{"id":643179,"date":"2026-05-01T17:33:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-01T17:33:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/643179\/"},"modified":"2026-05-01T17:33:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-01T17:33:08","slug":"northern-ireland-football-michael-oneills-side-to-play-guinea-in-june-friendly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/643179\/","title":{"rendered":"Northern Ireland football: Michael O’Neill’s side to play Guinea in June friendly"},"content":{"rendered":"

Northern Ireland will play Guinea on Thursday, 4 June in an international friendly in Spain.<\/p>\n

The game will be played at the Estadio Ciudad de La Linea in the Province of Cadiz, with the kick-off time to be confirmed at a later date.<\/p>\n

In the first of two post-season fixtures, Michael O’Neill’s side will then face Kylian Mbappe’s France<\/a> in the host’s World Cup send off in Lille on 8 June. <\/p>\n

Northern Ireland missed out on the 2026 World Cup after losing 2-0 to Italy in their play-off semi-final in Bergamo.<\/p>\n

Guinea’s hopes of reaching the finals in the USA, Canada and Mexico were ended by a fourth-place finish in their qualifying group. <\/p>\n

Despite reaching the quarter-finals in 2023, Guinea did not qualify for the most recent edition of the African Cup of Nations in December.<\/p>\n

Paolo Duarte’s side are ranked 80th in the world and their most recognisable player is Borussia Dortmund striker Serhou Guirassy, who has scored 11 goals in 28 caps.<\/p>\n

Northern Ireland have played African opposition on four previous occasions. The last meeting against a team from the continent was a 1-1 draw with Morocco at Windsor Park in 2010. <\/p>\n

The most famous game against African opposition was at the 1986 World Cup when Norman Whiteside scored in a 1-1 draw with Algeria.<\/p>\n

After June’s friendlies, Northern Ireland are next in action when the Nations League begins in September with matches in Georgia and a home match with Hungary.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Northern Ireland will play Guinea on Thursday, 4 June in an international friendly in Spain. The game will…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":643180,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-643179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=643179"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643179\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/643180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=643179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=643179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=643179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}