Ireland were drawn against Israel, Austria and Kosovo<\/a>.<\/p>\n“I think we’re improving a lot of things. I’m confident that they want to keep me. But I really want them to want me.<\/p>\n
“So let’s see after the (play-off) games, we’ll see how the atmosphere is, how much appetite there is for me to stay on for them. But it’s all positive. I know they like to keep me at this moment.”<\/p>\n
While the Nations League isn’t currently high on his priorities, given the play-off with the Czech Republic in March, Hallgrimsson admitted that Ireland have handed a stern test with the draw.<\/p>\n
Speaking to the BBC, he said: “It’s an interesting group. It’s going to be tough for us, strong opponents.<\/p>\n
“And even Kosovo, they were the lowest ranked team in our group and they had a really impressive record from the last 15 games with two losses, two draws, and 11 wins. So that’s a really impressive run.<\/p>\n
“We know Austria were one of the first teams to qualify directly for the World Cup from Europe. And then, of course, Israel is always a tough opponent.”<\/p>\n
Asked whether it will bring off-field implications in being paired with Israel, the Ireland boss said: “Yeah, and that’s not my job.<\/p>\n
“My job is to focus on the football side and I’m going to do that.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Heimir Hallgrimsson is confident the Football Association of Ireland wants to keep him on, but is relaxed if…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":179150,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":{"0":"post-295353","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295353","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=295353"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295353\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/179150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=295353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=295353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=295353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}