Cristiano Ronaldo spoke warmly about the prospect of facing the Republic of Ireland and a red-hot atmosphere at the Aviva Stadium the night before Portugal\u2019s visit.<\/p>\n
“I really like the fans here. The support these fans give to the national team, it’s lovely. For me, it’s a pleasure to come and play here again,\u201d he said at the pre-match press conference.<\/p>\n
He may feel differently about that now as his red card and Troy Parrott\u2019s first half brace, denied Ronaldo the victory his side needed to book their ticket to next summer\u2019s World Cup.<\/p>\n
Nathan Collins and Ireland had other ideas on Wednesday night as they produced a defensive masterclass to keep the Boys in Green\u2019s hopes of reaching the finals alive.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe wanted to qualify, that was their easy run then, they could go on holiday probably.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt didn’t really get to us. We knew we were going to do it, we knew we had a job to do,\u201d added Collins, who wants Ireland to take confidence from this victory into Sunday\u2019s decider in Budapest where a win against Hungary would secure a playoff spot.<\/p>\n
\u201cI’ve said it before, I always thought we had this in us and that’s the most frustrating part when we lose because we know we have this in us.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd that’s where it hurts the most. Today wasn’t about shutting up anyone, it wasn’t about any of that.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was about us, team, fans and just giving ourselves a chance on Sunday.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have to take confidence from this. It’ll be a completely different game, completely different team, away from home, it’s a bit different again.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut we have a threat we know what we have to do and it’s simple now. It was so complicated for us before, but now it’s simple enough.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we can do that, we can beat anyone. I think it’s good that I’ve simplified it for us. We just need to win. Nothing else, no other strings attached. Just go win a match, a game of football.<\/p>\n
\u201cToday we were good and everything went well, so we just have to draw on that and try to do that again.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cristiano Ronaldo spoke warmly about the prospect of facing the Republic of Ireland and a red-hot atmosphere at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":138817,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43,1842],"class_list":["post-138816","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news","tag-republic-of-ireland-mnt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138816","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=138816"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138816\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/138817"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}