{"id":72367,"date":"2025-10-10T19:31:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-10T19:31:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/72367\/"},"modified":"2025-10-10T19:31:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-10T19:31:07","slug":"roberto-martinez-heaps-praise-on-seamus-coleman-ahead-of-ireland-clash-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/72367\/","title":{"rendered":"Roberto Martinez heaps praise on S\u00e9amus Coleman ahead of Ireland clash \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall b-it-article-body__text--left\">Portugal manager Roberto Martinez is reunited with one of his former players, 36-year-old defender <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/seamus-coleman\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/seamus-coleman\/\">S\u00e9amus Coleman<\/a>, a meeting he is relishing when the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/republic-of-ireland-mnt\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/republic-of-ireland-mnt\/\">Republic of Ireland<\/a> visit Lisbon for their World Cup qualifier on Saturday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Martinez said: \u201cI think he was in that season, 2013, in my opinion the best right back in the Premier League by a mile.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">\u201cHe\u2019s somebody who has got this incredible capacity to arrive in the final third, to defend one-on-one situations, enormous capacity. And that leadership, it made him a captain material from the first day.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">\u201cI love him. I loved working with him. He was really demanding, somebody that you could see his evolution during the season. I have been very proud seeing his career.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">\u201cTo see him still at Everton, still being an important part of a club in the Premier League and then still being in the national camp &#8230;<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">\u201cI am really looking forward to seeing him tomorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">When asked about Ireland, Martinez said: \u201cDefensively, they are very strong and physical.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">\u201cIt is a team that is very direct and we need to be very aware of winning our duels and also of the second balls.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">\u201cThey are very good at winning them, leading to chances \u201cWe know that set pieces are a big part of their game and we are very aware of the qualities of their players.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">\u201cWe need to give them no space and at the same time we need to play our game and try to command the game.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Portugal could guarantee their participation in next summer\u2019s finals with wins over Ireland and Hungary over the next few days.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">\u201cSecure qualification already? The most important thing is to perform as well as possible against Ireland and try to take it step by step. This qualifying phase is strange, there\u2019s no room for error, but our preparation was very good, and we still have one more training session,\u201d Martinez said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">\u201cOur focus is on Ireland, and we can\u2019t underestimate our opponent. Ireland had a difficult game in Armenia, with a trip in between after the first leg, and we expect a comeback. We\u2019re only thinking about the game; the rest could be dangerous.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Portugal manager Roberto Martinez is reunited with one of his former players, 36-year-old defender S\u00e9amus Coleman, a meeting&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":72368,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43,2888,1842,48229],"class_list":["post-72367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news","tag-portugal","tag-republic-of-ireland-mnt","tag-seamus-coleman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72367","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=72367"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72367\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}