All the heat is on Ireland in the cold of Kazakhstan for Friday\u2019s World Cup playoff semi-final first leg in Astana.<\/p>\n
This is the first stop of a likely four-step route to next year\u2019s finals in Brazil, once Ireland avoid a shock against a minnow and beat either Poland or Belgium in the final round.<\/p>\n
As the 21st best team in the world, according to Fifa\u2019s rankings, the expectation is on the Irish to sweep past an opponent situated 98th in the standings.<\/p>\n
Friday\u2019s first leg on the artificial pitch of the Astana Arena, contested at noon Irish time, will be followed by the second leg at Pairc U\u00ed Chaoimh next Tuesday (7.30pm).<\/p>\n
Uefa\u2019s convoluted playoff system ensures teams from all pots figure.<\/p>\n
Through Ireland avoiding bottom spot in their League A group, they are seeded, with home advantage for the second leg in both the semi and final.<\/p>\n
Kazakhstan qualified by finishing second in the last pool, League C, sandwiched in between pool winners Belarus and Armenia.<\/p>\n
Everything is stacked against them in the freezing local temperatures but they\u2019ll take solace from tackling an Ireland team without their pair of world-class stars.<\/p>\n
Katie McCabe is with the Irish party that took a ten-and-half aerial trek to eastern Europe but is suspended.<\/p>\n
A decision was made to preclude Denise O\u2019Sullivan from the first leg too, owing to the extra travel she\u2019d endure coming from her club Gotham in New York.<\/p>\n
A newcomer to the Irish set-up Stephen Neligan. He becomes Carla Ward\u2019s fourth different assistant in 10 months, after Alan Mahon, Gary Cronin and Brian Sorensen.<\/p>\n
The latter appointment didn\u2019t even join the camp as his plans changed due him being placed in caretaker charge of Aston Villa. Dane Sorensen was already technical advisor at Villa and the expanded duties prevented him reporting for international duty.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"All the heat is on Ireland in the cold of Kazakhstan for Friday\u2019s World Cup playoff semi-final first…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":648169,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43,18998],"class_list":["post-648168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news","tag-republic-of-ireland-wnt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648168","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=648168"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648168\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/648169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=648168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=648168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=648168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}