{"id":646526,"date":"2026-10-06T14:04:08","date_gmt":"2026-10-06T14:04:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/646526\/"},"modified":"2026-10-06T14:04:08","modified_gmt":"2026-10-06T14:04:08","slug":"uefa-to-investigate-alleged-spitting-incident-at-half-time-in-ireland-v-israel-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/646526\/","title":{"rendered":"Uefa to investigate alleged spitting incident at half-time in Ireland v Israel \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Uefa<\/a> has launched an investigation into claims a member of the Republic of Ireland<\/a> coaching staff was spat at during the heated Nations League encounter with Israel<\/a> on Sunday.<\/p>\n

The European governing body has confirmed that post-match reports submitted by match officials \u201ccontained an allegation of an incident in or around the tunnel at half-time\u201d and that it will be the subject of a disciplinary investigation \u201cregarding potential misconducts from player(s)\u201d.<\/p>\n

Witnesses at the match, held in the Serbian town of Backa Topola, reported hearing a member of the Irish staff \u2013 understood to be the fitness coach Damian Doyle \u2013 claim he had been spat on by an Israeli player as the teams went down the tunnel at half-time.<\/p>\n

A spokesperson for the Israeli Football Association denied the reports, saying \u201cno one had spat towards the coach\u201d.<\/p>\n

After the match Ireland\u2019s coach, Heimir Hallgr\u00edmsson, said his team had been subject to a number of apparent provocations in the build-up and sought to defuse the incident.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere have been a lot of those accidents and we were clever enough to avoid it before it went too far,\u201d Hallgrimsson said. \u201cI felt it was their intention to intimidate us and make us do something stupid. I give big credit to how the players handled their emotions.\u201d<\/p>\n

The investigation will probably extend the rancour that turned this double-header between Ireland and Israel into a geopolitical flashpoint. Ireland had been under intense pressure from supporters at home to boycott the matches and conducted a vote over whether to fulfil the opening fixture in Hungary.<\/p>\n

The second match, nominally an Ireland home fixture, was held in Backa Topola after the Football Association of Ireland said \u201coperational challenges\u201d would prevent them from staging it safely in Dublin.<\/p>\n

The build-up involved increasingly heated accusations made by both parties, and two Israeli journalists were banned from attending Ireland\u2019s post-match press conference after Uefa found they had brought \u201cfootball into disrepute by using a press conference for politically motivated purposes\u201d and displayed \u201cimproper behaviour\u201d during and after a pre-match press conference.<\/p>\n

Hallgr\u00edmsson has asked that Uefa keep Ireland and Israel separate from each other in future draws. A Uefa spokesperson said: \u201cDecisions to avoid certain teams being drawn against each other are made taking into consideration several factors, especially conditions between the two countries leading to structural risks for security. Uefa handles every situation very carefully on its own merits and monitors all facts and developments.\u201d \u2014 Guardian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Uefa has launched an investigation into claims a member of the Republic of Ireland coaching staff was spat…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":646527,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,266856,59269,112],"class_list":["post-646526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-ireland-v-israel","tag-nations-league","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646526","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=646526"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646526\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/646527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=646526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=646526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=646526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}