The Republic of Ireland are no strangers to penalty pain. But unlike against Spain at the 2002 World Cup and Slovakia in the Euro 2020 play-offs, they led this game 2-0 and now must reckon with how they lost control of their destiny. <\/p>\n
“We were in a good spot,” captain Nathan Collins told BBC Sport NI. <\/p>\n
“We were playing really well. We were front-footed, creating chances, our press was working, we were hurting them on the ball. <\/p>\n
“The timing of their first goal probably affects it a bit and knocks the wind out of you. They had a lot to fight for in the second half, but it’s probably the timing of it rather than the performance.”<\/p>\n
There was a kind of twisted inevitability with how the Republic of Ireland’s fate was sealed after Hallgrimsson revealed in the build-up that his squad would not practise penalties.<\/p>\n
It at least did not impact Parrott’s coolness from 12 yards. The talismanic striker converted in Budapest and expertly dispatched another for the opener in Prague despite a lengthy wait for the home side’s protestations to subside. <\/p>\n
Parrott made no mistake at the start of the shootout, and while Adam Idah and Robbie Brady both followed suit, Azaz and Browne – who also failed to score in the Slovakia shootout – were denied by Kovar.<\/p>\n
“They have a lot of thoughts in their head right now,” added Collins, who hit the crossbar early in the game. <\/p>\n
“There’s not a lot you can say to a person when they’re in that position. But there are not a lot of people that would stand up and take a penalty.<\/p>\n
“It took a lot of bravery for them to do that so there’s no fingers being pointed at them at all.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Republic of Ireland are no strangers to penalty pain. But unlike against Spain at the 2002 World…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":563939,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[440],"tags":[49,48,561,82],"class_list":["post-563938","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\/563938","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=563938"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563938\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/563939"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=563938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=563938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=563938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}