World Cup qualifiers: Armenia v Republic of Ireland, Republican Stadium, 5pm Irish time<\/p>\n
Key reads<\/p>\n
Good afternoon, have you recovered from Saturday\u2019s 2-2 draw with Hungary<\/a> yet? We\u2019ll just have to hope that Heimir Hallgr\u00edmsson\u2019s men have because at 5.0 this afternoon they kick off against Armenia in Yerevan in the second game of their 2026 World Cup qualifying campaign. And they could really do with a win.<\/p>\n Group favourites Portugal, who are away to Hungary at 7.45 this evening, dished out a 5-0 hiding to Armenia on Saturday at the Vazgen Sargsyan anvan Hanrapetakan Marzadasht, surely one of the lengthier venue names in world football? (It\u2019s named in honour of Vazgen Sargsyan, the Armenian prime minister who was assassinated in 1999).<\/p>\n Ireland are ranked 45 places above Armenia in the Fifa list, so you\u2019d think this should be a breeze. But – and apologies for the reminder – the last time they visited Yerevan, Stephen Kenny the gaffer at the time, they lost 1-0 in their 2022 Nations League meeting<\/a>. And they only won the return game in Dublin 3-2 thanks to a 91st minute Robbie Brady penalty<\/a>. <\/p>\n Sensibly, then, Hallgr\u00edmsson insisted yesterday that \u201cwe should respect Armenia – it\u2019s like Iceland when we go to the Eurovision: we always think we have the best song, but we never go through the final\u201d.<\/p>\n Ireland have only qualified for two of the last 11 Eurovision Song Contest finals, and just three of the last 11 World Cups. So we\u2019re the last to take these things for granted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"World Cup qualifiers: Armenia v Republic of Ireland, Republican Stadium, 5pm Irish time Key reads Good afternoon, have…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10030,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4700,61,60,43,1842,4018],"class_list":["post-10029","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-heimir-hallgrimsson","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news","tag-republic-of-ireland-mnt","tag-world-cup"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10029","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10029"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10029\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10030"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}