Hungary’s victory in Yerevan earlier on Thursday simplified the situation for the Republic of Ireland. <\/p>\n
Knowing defeat would end their qualifying hopes, they needed to produce the best performance of the Hallgrimsson era against the 2016 European champions.<\/p>\n
And while Evan Ferguson’s injury robbed the Irish of their top scorer, Parrott stepped up in spectacular fashion. <\/p>\n
The former Tottenham forward, who has scored 13 goals in 14 games for AZ Alkmaar this season, led the line with energy and intensity, forcing Portugal keeper Diogo Costa into a mistake while attempting to clear the ball after 15 minutes.<\/p>\n
From the resulting corner, Jack Taylor found Liam Scales at the far post, with the Celtic defender’s header back into the six-yard area turned in by Parrott. <\/p>\n
Sensing opportunities against a shaky Portuguese backline, Chiedozie Ogbene also looked threatening for the hosts and nearly doubled the lead when he cut inside and struck a post with a curling right-foot shot. <\/p>\n
With seconds remaining in the first half, Parrott handed the Irish their first two-goal lead in two years when he cut inside Ruben Neves and beat Costa at his near post, sparking ecstatic scenes among the home fans in Dublin. <\/p>\n
The Republic of Ireland would have expected a strong response from the visitors, and while Caoimhin Kelleher produced a fine save to deny Goncalo Ramos, the hosts were able to comfortably see the game out and complete a famous win over the team ranked fifth in the world. <\/p>\n
It is the Republic of Ireland’s first competitive win over Portugal in seven attempts stretching back to 1995 and a vital boost in their bid to reach the World Cup for the first time since 2002. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hungary’s victory in Yerevan earlier on Thursday simplified the situation for the Republic of Ireland. Knowing defeat would…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":282109,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[440],"tags":[49,48,561,82],"class_list":["post-282108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=282108"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282108\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/282109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=282108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=282108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=282108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}