Heimir Hallgr\u00edmsson says Ireland must leave their \u201cpain and heartbreak\u201d behind in Portugal when they square up against bottom seeds Armenia on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
A vastly improved performance on last month\u2019s defeat to the Armenians was six minutes from extracting a point off the Portuguese until R\u00faben Neves ghosted in to head the only goal of the World Cup qualifier.<\/p>\n
At the midway point of the campaign, Ireland have one point from nine but their manager feels two wins from the final three qualifiers could squeeze Ireland into the runners-up spot and entry into the playoffs.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis was a painful and heartbreaking result,\u201d reflected a crestfallen Hallgr\u00edmsson.<\/p>\n
\u201cSometimes us coaches try to talk up performance after a defeat but our gameplan worked.<\/p>\n
\u201cTeamwork was excellent. There was a lot of energy put into this match and going back to Ireland with nothing is painful.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe knew that we\u2019d get space behind Portugal. Once we won the ball, Festy Ebosele and Chiedozie Ogbene were explosive on the flanks.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to leave the frustration and pain in Portugal and focus on Armenia at home.\u201d Hallgr\u00edmsson admitted the exertions of defending throughout a humid evening in Lisbon may have contributed to Francisco Trinc\u00e3o being allowed time and space to execute the match-winning cross.<\/p>\n
\u201cOnce you get tired, you give the player on the ball more time,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cTheir player was given too much time to cross. We had defended those moments better, almost all the time, so that was unfortunate.<\/p>\n
\u201cPortugal have the quality to find the perfect pass and run.<\/p>\n
His Portuguese counterpart Roberto Martinez felt they shaded a tight contest.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe expected that type of performance from Ireland because the Armenia defeat wasn\u2019t at their level,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe weren\u2019t surprised by their tactics, only their capacity to be aggressive and defend so well.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was incredible solidarity from the players. Evan Ferguson showed how important a striker and Kelleher had an amazing game.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Heimir Hallgr\u00edmsson says Ireland must leave their \u201cpain and heartbreak\u201d behind in Portugal when they square up against…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":74636,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1113,61,60,2539,5782,43,5783],"class_list":{"0":"post-74635","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-fai","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-league-of-ireland","12":"tag-local-soccer","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-premiership"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74635","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=74635"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74635\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}