{"id":631251,"date":"2026-09-21T09:02:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-21T09:02:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/631251\/"},"modified":"2026-09-21T09:02:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-21T09:02:09","slug":"republic-of-ireland-heimir-hallgrimssons-side-republic-of-ireland-braced-for-testing-nations-league","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/631251\/","title":{"rendered":"Republic of Ireland: Heimir Hallgrimsson&#8217;s side Republic of Ireland braced for testing Nations League"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Republic of Ireland&#8217;s performance in the Nations League will have a lasting impact on their Euro 2028 qualification campaign, so results are important.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Should Republic of Ireland finish top of the group they will earn promotion into League A.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Should they finish second they will have a play-off with a third-place team from League A to try and win promotion.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">More importantly, finishing first or second will also guarantee that Republic of Ireland will be a pot two side when the draw for the Euro 2028 qualifiers is made in Belfast in December, which, in theory, could present them with a kinder draw.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Should they finish third, they will remain in League B, while if they finish bottom of the group they will have a play-off against a second-placed team from League C, which, if they lost they would then suffer relegation to the third-tier of the Nations League.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">A third or fourth place finish in their group would see Republic of Ireland placed in pot three for the Euro 2028 qualifiers and they may be paired with two European heavy-hitters which could make their path to the tournament much tougher.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">A good performance in the Nations League could also offer a route to qualification for the tournament if the Irish fail to qualify automatically.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The best-performing teams in the Nations League that do not qualify for the Euros in the qualification campaign will enter to play-offs to earn the final qualifying spots for the tournament.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">As Hallgrimsson put it when talking through the scenarios: &#8220;Our seeding for the Euros depends on the Nations League&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;League A will mean better opponents and would be better financially for FAI and there is an escape route to the Euros from the Nations League, so lots of reasons we want to do really well in these Nations League matches,&#8221; he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Republic of Ireland&#8217;s performance in the Nations League will have a lasting impact on their Euro 2028 qualification&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":631252,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-631251","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\/631251","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=631251"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631251\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/631252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=631251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=631251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=631251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}