{"id":627468,"date":"2026-09-17T12:36:13","date_gmt":"2026-09-17T12:36:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/627468\/"},"modified":"2026-09-17T12:36:13","modified_gmt":"2026-09-17T12:36:13","slug":"hallgrimsson-spoke-to-every-ireland-player-individually-on-israel-question","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/627468\/","title":{"rendered":"Hallgrimsson spoke to every Ireland player individually on Israel question"},"content":{"rendered":"

Republic of Ireland manager Heimir Hallgrimsson<\/a> has confirmed that he spoke to all of his players individually about the prospect of facing Israel<\/a> in the two upcoming Nations League games this month.<\/p>\n

Debate as to whether the games, both to be played in neutral venues, should go ahead has been intense ever since the draw was made last spring and pressure has been put on both the FAI and the players, the latter via their agents, not to fulfil the fixture.<\/p>\n

Hallgrimsson addressed the issue briefly on Thursday morning after he unveiled his 26-man squad<\/a> for a four-game window that will see his side face Israel twice as well as Kosovo and Austria once apiece.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have spoken to all the players individually on that because you shouldn\u2019t be doing this on a group talk. Obviously we have different opinions, different strength of opinions, and I think it is best to say, without going into individual, none of us feel comfortable playing these games.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut, once we have decided to play them, we all stick together and play as one. And we want to represent Ireland with the best games and performances that we can. That\u2019s the agreement between all of us, but obviously we don\u2019t all share the same opinion, and that is just human nature.\u201d<\/p>\n

The comments come after FAI director of football John Martin said earlier this week<\/a> that he feels Ireland shouldn\u2019t be playing Israel in the upcoming Nations League campaign.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s unease from everybody on this, from me personally, the (FAI) executive team and board,\u201d said Martin, now a year in a job which places him in ultimate charge of the footballing operations.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we all agree we shouldn’t be in the position where we have to play these games.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don’t think there’s any doubt that we shouldn’t be in that position but the board, supported by the executive, chose to play the games.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s a really difficult situation for the players. I\u2019ve had a lot of communications with Heimir and obviously speak to players.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverything we’re doing is with a view to trying to protect players. In terms of ownership of the decision, it was us in the FAI, not the players. So we\u2019re really conscious of that because their profile is so high that naturally the spotlight falls on them.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Republic of Ireland manager Heimir Hallgrimsson has confirmed that he spoke to all of his players individually about…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":627469,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[5658,4712,1113,61,60,43,1842],"class_list":["post-627468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-irish-examiner-instagram","tag-israel-palestine","tag-fai","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news","tag-republic-of-ireland-mnt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627468","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=627468"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627468\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/627469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=627468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=627468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=627468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}