Kenny Cunningham Fears Opening World Cup Match Could Signal Bigger Problem<\/p>\n
South Africa found themselves down to ten men in the 49th minute when Sphephelo Sithole was sent off for denying a goalscoring opportunity.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n Things got even worse for the African side when Themba Zwane received his marching orders after catching Roberto Alvarado high with an arm as the Mexican attempted to block his run.<\/p>\n Mexico also finished the game with ten men after captain C\u00e9sar Montes was shown a late red card for a rash challenge that denied a goalscoring opportunity.<\/p>\n Speaking on RT\u00c9, Kenny Cunningham admitted he was concerned by what he had seen.<\/p>\n I hope this isn’t going to be a common theme in the tournament in terms of the poor quality of defending.<\/p>\n The former Republic of Ireland defender believes there is sometimes too much focus on attacking talent without enough appreciation for the importance of quality defenders.<\/p>\n People talk about great attacking play, the modern players, some outstanding players within the game.<\/p>\n But to counteract that, there has to be some good quality defenders as well.<\/p>\n Cunningham then delivered a warning ahead of the rest of the competition.<\/p>\n And if this game tonight is going to be symptomatic of what we’re going to see in the tournament going forward, that’s a kind of sad indictment.\u201d<\/p>\n While Mexico will be delighted to have secured three points in front of their home supporters, Cunningham’s comments reflected a feeling that the standard of defending on display left plenty to be desired.<\/p>\n The RT\u00c9 pundit will now hope the opening night proves to be an exception rather than the rule as the World Cup begins to gather momentum.<\/p>\n SEE ALSO: Football Fans Baffled By Bizarre Aspect Of FIFA World Cup Opening Ceremony<\/a><\/p>\n
\nSEE ALSO: Roy Keane Made Feelings Abundantly Clear On Controversial American World Cup<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kenny Cunningham hopes the defending on show during the opening game of the 2026 World Cup is not…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":496801,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,212856,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-496800","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-kenny-cunningham","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496800","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=496800"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496800\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/496801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=496800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=496800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=496800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}