Heimir Hallgrimsson deserves massive praise for what he has achieved with Ireland over the last week, according to former international Shay Given.<\/p>\n
The Boys in Green kept their World Cup qualification hopes alive in an astonishing manner in Budapest<\/a> as Troy Parrott completed a hat-trick in the dying seconds to break Hungarian hearts.<\/p>\n Like Robbie Keane in Ibaraki, John O’Shea in Gelsenkirchen and Robbie Brady in Lille, Parrott has scored a late goal, away from home, that will be remembered for years to come.<\/p>\n But for Hallgrimsson, whose future was in doubt before this international window, the six points picked up against Portugal and Hungary are a justification for his approach to setting up the team.<\/p>\n Just 68 days separated the nadir of another defeat to Armenia in Yerevan and yesterday’s heroics at the Puskas Arena but Given thinks the Icelander’s level-headedness was a key factor in the turnaround.<\/p>\n “He’s been very calm through the whole thing, while we’re all getting high and we’re getting low,” he said on RT\u00c9’s Morning Ireland.<\/p>\n “He’s managed to keep this sort of calm. Even after the game at the weekend, I was going through the bleeding… jumping off the sofa, up the sofa, down the sofa.<\/p>\n \n “Then in his interview after he just kept it so calm and that’s a trait, and that’s a quality in itself. When you’re a manager at an international level – at any level, actually – to be that calm after such a monumental result, he’s done a phenomenal job.<\/p>\n “After that Armenia game, we all doubted him, ‘is he the right man, should someone else be in charge, you know’ – the usual stuff – but he deserves great credit.”<\/p>\n Ireland still need two wins to make it to next summer’s tournament which will be followed by the build up to Euro 2028, a competition which the country is helping to host.<\/p>\n It’s an enticing prospect for any manager, should the Boys in Green qualify.<\/p>\n For Given, there’s a sense of the team having turned a corner since Thursday with the hope that they can carry the momentum into March’s decisive play-off period.<\/p>\n “it just brings you back down to so many years, both as a player, but as a fan,” he added.<\/p>\n “Even before I played in the Jack Charlton era, you know, the good days.”<\/p>\n Listen to Shay Given’s full interview from Morning Ireland below<\/p>\n We need your consent to load this rte-player contentWe use rte-player to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content.Manage Preferences<\/a><\/p>\n Watch Republic of Ireland v Switzerland in the FIFA Under-17 World Cup on Tuesday from 2.30pm on RT\u00c92 and the RT\u00c9 Player. Follow a live blog on the RT\u00c9 News App and on rte.ie\/sport<\/p>\n Watch Andorra v Republic of Ireland in UEFA Under-21 European Championship qualifying on Tuesday from 6pm on RT\u00c92 and the RT\u00c9 Player <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Heimir Hallgrimsson deserves massive praise for what he has achieved with Ireland over the last week, according to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":144474,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-144473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144473","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=144473"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144473\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/144474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}