{"id":366893,"date":"2026-03-26T22:02:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-26T22:02:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/366893\/"},"modified":"2026-03-26T22:02:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T22:02:09","slug":"czechia-v-ireland-world-cup-qualification-play-off-semi-final","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/366893\/","title":{"rendered":"Czechia v Ireland, World Cup qualification play-off semi-final"},"content":{"rendered":"

5 hrs ago <\/p>\n

4:51PM\n <\/p>\n

\n Czeching out the opposition <\/p>\n

One of the big unknowns about tonight is exactly what mood the Czechs will be in for the game.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As a team, their home record is impressive, with 15 wins from their last 18 games and just two defeats in that time.<\/p>\n

However, the has been some on an off the pitch disquiet that could be distracting.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A humbling 2-1 loss away to the Faroe Islands during qualifying led to recrimination among players, fans and the football association.<\/p>\n

First, the captain was stripped of the armband. Then the manager was sacked and after missing out on at least three of preferred replacements, they settled for 74-year-old veteran boss Miroslav Koubek.<\/p>\n

Add to that, only yesterday Czech police charged 32 people over a football match-fixing scandal<\/a>\u00a0in the country.<\/p>\n

The scandal only affects some lower league teams in the country, so none of the players or management of the national team are affected, but it\u2019s certainly cast a bit of a shadow over the Czechs in the build up to tonight\u2019s match.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Now in saying this, 20 years ago this year Italian club football was engulfed in a much more high-profile match fixing scandal<\/a> and the national team went on to win the World Cup that year. So let\u2019s not be getting ahead of ourselves.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"5 hrs ago 4:51PM Czeching out the opposition One of the big unknowns about tonight is exactly what…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":366894,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1128,61,60,165278,4707,43,165279,165280,3405],"class_list":["post-366893","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-football","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-ireland-czechia","tag-liveblog","tag-news","tag-ole-ole-ole","tag-play-off-fever","tag-soccer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366893","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=366893"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366893\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/366894"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=366893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=366893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=366893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}