{"id":366939,"date":"2026-03-26T22:40:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-26T22:40:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/366939\/"},"modified":"2026-03-26T22:40:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T22:40:07","slug":"northern-irelands-world-cup-dream-ends-in-play-off-defeat-to-italy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/366939\/","title":{"rendered":"Northern Ireland\u2019s World Cup dream ends in play-off defeat to Italy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>                    Italy 2<br \/>Northern Ireland 0<\/p>\n<p>NORTHERN IRELAND\u2019S WORLD Cup dreams were ended by Italy as Michael O\u2019Neill\u2019s young side fell to a 2-0 qualifying play-off semi-final defeat in Bergamo.<\/p>\n<p>Northern Ireland battled superbly against an Italy side under immense pressure to deliver qualification after two consecutive failures to reach a tournament they have won four times, but were undone by second-half goals from Sandro Tonali and Moise Kean.<\/p>\n<p>Having reached half-time with the match still goalless, Northern Ireland successfully ramped up the tension inside the Stadio di Bergamo, but it was released in the 56th minute when Tonali capitalised on a poor clearance from Isaac Price to thrash home.<\/p>\n<p>Kean, a constant threat throughout the night, then settled it 10 minutes from time as his left-footed strike went in off the post.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Italy 2Northern Ireland 0 NORTHERN IRELAND\u2019S WORLD Cup dreams were ended by Italy as Michael O\u2019Neill\u2019s young side&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":366940,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[165299,61,60,102,43,2443,3405,165300],"class_list":{"0":"post-366939","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-end-of-the-road","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-italy","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-northern-ireland","14":"tag-soccer","15":"tag-world-cup-play-offs"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366939","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=366939"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366939\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/366940"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=366939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=366939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=366939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}