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\u200a’It’s really hard to take’: Ireland’s penalty heartbreak after early dominance<\/p>\nSammie Szmodics will remain in a Prague hospital overnight following a sickening collision with Czech Republic defender Stepan Chaloupek near the end of extra-time as the Republic of Ireland lost the World Cup playoff at the Fortuna Arena on penalties. <\/p>\n
\u201cSammie was unconscious on the ground, but we have good doctors and they took care of him on the grass,\u201d said Republic of Ireland head coach Heimir Hallgr\u00edmsson. \u201cHe\u2019s now at hospital and back to consciousness. He\u2019s just being tested and checked and monitored and he will stay here tonight and hopefully fly back to Ireland tomorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hallgr\u00edmsson revealed that Szmodics was introduced in extra-time to take a penalty in the shoot-out. The Ipswich Town attacker replaced Jayson Molumby with five minutes remaining, only to be carried off the field after the collision.<\/p>\n
\u200a’It’s really hard to take’: Ireland’s penalty heartbreak after early dominance<\/p>\n
Troy Parrott, Adam Idah and Robbie Brady all scored in the shoot-out while Caoimh\u00edn Kelleher denied Mojmir Chytil, for a 3-2 lead. Finn Azaz and Alan Browne had their spot-kicks saved by Czech goalkeeper Matej Kovar before Jan Kliment\u2019s strike ended Ireland\u2019s dream of bridging a 10-year gap to feature at a major tournament. Browne also missed a penalty when Ireland lost the shoot-out in 2020 to Slovakia to qualify for Euro 2021. <\/p>\n
Hallgr\u00edmsson admitted that Szmodics was one of the six penalty takers chosen by the Ireland management.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had a list prepared. Sammie was one of six names. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe feel the same pain as all of them [the players]. We need to give them support. It doesn\u2019t matter how many hug you when this happens, it\u2019s just going to be as painful as you would expect.<\/p>\n
\u201cPain. I feel pain, I feel pride in the performance of the players, they gave their all. I feel gratitude towards the supporters who turned up and supported us through the whole game and even after. I feel pride being a part of that group. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe will take with us that we can play teams higher than us in the Fifa rankings, that we can punch above out weight and that we can compete with Portugal, Hungary, Czech [Republic].<\/p>\n
\u201cWe came here with three wins in a row. That has not happened for a very long time. This was the biggest game that most of these teams played. They will grow from it.\u201d <\/p>\n
Ahead of the playoff final against Denmark next Tuesday to reach the World Cup this summer, the Czech manager Miroslav Koubek said: \u201cI would like to see more of an actual game next time.\u201d<\/p>\n
On why Koubek decided to bench the team\u2019s former captain Tomas Soucek, he revealed: \u201cWe wanted to tackle Troy Parrott in particular. We studied his style a lot and we managed to build the rest around that. It was quite successful. I wanted to have a better game, I wanted to fight the Irish but we needed to focus on Parrott. <\/p>\n
\u201cAs we were losing 2-1 we needed to adapt and adjust our strategy. I explained it to Tomas and he agreed, accepting it as a professional, which he is. Our main goal was to put their sweepers under pressure.\u201d<\/p>\n
Having been stripped of the national captaincy last year, following an issue with fans, Soucek added: \u201cIt was more of a political thing. I came here wanting to help the guys. I play for the Czech Republic. They can take my armband, but they can\u2019t take my heart.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sammie Szmodics will remain in a Prague hospital overnight following a sickening collision with Czech Republic defender Stepan…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":367135,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[56982,4700,61,60,43,1842,4018],"class_list":["post-367134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-czech-republic","tag-heimir-hallgrimsson","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news","tag-republic-of-ireland-mnt","tag-world-cup"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367134","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=367134"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367134\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/367135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=367134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=367134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=367134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}