{"id":488270,"date":"2026-06-08T01:07:11","date_gmt":"2026-06-08T01:07:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/488270\/"},"modified":"2026-06-08T01:07:11","modified_gmt":"2026-06-08T01:07:11","slug":"france-v-northern-ireland-will-ni-be-badly-behaved-guests-at-world-cup-party","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/488270\/","title":{"rendered":"France v Northern Ireland: Will NI be ‘badly-behaved guests’ at World Cup party?"},"content":{"rendered":"

It is a bit like being invited to gig to see the warm-up act but not the headliner, or invited to pre-drinks but not the actual party. <\/p>\n

Northern Ireland will not be at the World Cup this summer, but on Monday (20:10 BST) they will face a France side who will be having their farewell send-off in Lille.<\/p>\n

Coming off the back of a surprise defeat by Ivory Coast on Thursday, France will be favourites to beat Michael O’Neill’s side and head off to the USA – where they will play Senegal, Iraq and Norway in Group I – in style.<\/p>\n

While O’Neill said “it’s nice to be invited” to play one of the World Cup favourites on their send-off, he isn’t intending for his side to roll out the red carpet for the hosts.<\/p>\n

“We probably have to be a badly-behaved guest, really,” said O’Neill.<\/p>\n

“That’s what we have to aspire to do, in terms of if we can make the game difficult for France, but we haven’t even mentioned that to the players.”<\/p>\n

O’Neill, who in May signed a new contract until 2032<\/a> amid interest from Blackburn Rovers, said how France decide to send their team off to the USA is “not something we pay too much attention to”.<\/p>\n

“It’s more about the level of the opposition, the quality that they have and an opportunity for us to measure ourselves, both individually and collectively as a team, is the most important thing for us,” he added.<\/p>\n

“France are the home nation, so however they choose to celebrate or give their team a send-off, as they rightly should do, is down to themselves.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It is a bit like being invited to gig to see the warm-up act but not the headliner,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":488271,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-488270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488270","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=488270"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488270\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/488271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=488270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=488270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=488270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}