{"id":375818,"date":"2026-04-01T04:15:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-01T04:15:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/375818\/"},"modified":"2026-04-01T04:15:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-01T04:15:08","slug":"penalty-kings-czechia-book-world-cup-spot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/375818\/","title":{"rendered":"Penalty kings Czechia book World Cup spot"},"content":{"rendered":"

Republic of Ireland’s conquerors Czechia booked their place in the summer\u2019s World Cup with a second penalty shootout victory in Prague in less than a week.<\/p>\n

The Fortuna Stadium last week witnessed a dramatic 2-2 draw and a continuation of Czechia\u2019s 100% winning record from penalty shootouts<\/a> as Irish World Cup dreams were cruelly dashed.<\/p>\n

This week it was a different venue \u2013 epet Arena, home to the oldest club in Czech football in Sparta Prague \u2013 and higher ranked opposition in Denmark, but it was a similar result, four goals evenly split before the hosts prevailed from the spot.<\/p>\n

The Danes surprisingly fell behind early on \u200cwhen Pavel Sulc found the top corner with a first-time strike after three minutes.<\/p>\n

\"PRAGUE,
\nCzechia players celebrate their second penalty shootout victory in a week<\/p>\n

Leading at the break, the visitors drew level in the 72nd minute through a \u2060Joachim Andersen header and the game went to extra time.<\/p>\n

Ladislav Krejci has looked right at home since taking over the Czechia captain\u2019s armband from Tomas Soucek, scoring four minutes from time against Ireland to force extra-time, and was on the scoresheet again in the capital city to restore his side\u2019s lead.<\/p>\n

The hosts were pegged back again when Kasper Hogh scored, but a first World Cup appearance for Czechia since 2006 awaits after winning 3-1 on penalties.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Republic of Ireland’s conquerors Czechia booked their place in the summer\u2019s World Cup with a second penalty shootout…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":375819,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-375818","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\/375818","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=375818"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375818\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/375819"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=375818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=375818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=375818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}