Peter Collins, to his credit, tried to hearten us by showing us a montage of our mightiest giant-killing – or, at least, giant-drawing – exploits from the past, but the problem was that most of the clips appeared to come from Path\u00e9 News\u2019 archives. Roy Keane, for example, looked about 12, and he now has several grandchildren.<\/p>\n
Dampening our spirits further still was the sight of the Portuguese squad getting off their bus in Lisbon, the combined value of the players who alighted greater than the average GDP of in or around 87.23 per cent of the planet\u2019s nations.<\/p>\n
What didn\u2019t help either was Peter telling us that Hungary had beaten Armenia 2-0 earlier in the day, a result that left us even bottom-er of the group, our host conceding that that added to what had been \u201ca fairly pessimistic tone in the build-up\u201d to our trip to the Est\u00e1dio Jos\u00e9 Alvalade.<\/p>\n
Incidentally, Wikipedia tells us that Jos\u00e9 Alvalade, who died in 1918, the same year Cristy Ronaldo made his debut for Portugal, studied medicine at Harvard before dropping out because he was too sensitive to deal with suffering and pain. \u201cTell me about it Jos\u00e9, tell me about it,\u201d as any Irish fan who opted to go for a two-hour walk come 7.45 on Saturday evening would say.<\/p>\n
![\"Portugal's](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/QAXD7YDPUDJ3QRPHVRR5YQ7JB4.jpg\")
Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo acknowledges the fans following victory against Ireland. Photograph: Zed Jameson\/PA <\/p>\n
But? Didi Hamann – and we did not see this coming – was full of beans, having evidently downed copious amounts of happy pills in the Montrose green room. \u201cI\u2019m confident a result is coming tonight,\u201d he said. \u201cThis country is one result away from everyone bouncing and saying \u2018we\u2019ve got a chance to go to the World Cup\u2019.\u201d In that sense, he was the anti-Ronnie-Whelan.<\/p>\n
Peter saluted Didi for his \u201cinfectious\u201d confidence, but Shay Given\u2019s face said \u2018I want whatever you\u2019re on\u2019. Portugal, he reminded us, hadn\u2019t lost at home in three years, have \u201ca bench full of superstars\u201d, never mind the 11 they were putting on the pitch, so, he predicted, it was going to be a long night. \u201cHang on to your hats\u201d. The only hope? \u201cCan we be ugly?\u201d We certainly were in Armenia, but it\u2019s doubtful Shay was looking for the same form of unattractiveness.<\/p>\n
\u201cFingers and everything else crossed,\u201d said Peter as he handed over to Des Curran and Ray Houghton in the stadium, Des channelling his inner Didi by asking, with hope in his heart, if \u201cwe could witness a night of nights in Lisbon?\u201d<\/p>\n
Well, it started decidedly well, to the point where the Irish contingent in the crowd were ole-ing after 10 minutes as our lads popped the ball around like they were, well, Portugal in disguise. True, most of the popping took place in their own half, but no matter.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re playing really well so far,\u201d said Ray, \u201cI\u2019m just wondering how long it can last.\u201d And then the negative Nellie almost banjaxed us by noting how Portugal were failing to cause our lads too much grief, at which point Cristy hit the post and, somehow, Bernardo Silva sent the rebound wide.<\/p>\n
Half-time: 0-0. You\u2019d be pinching yerself. But, warned Didi, \u201cdon\u2019t wreck a good 45 minutes with a stupid mistake\u201d. And then Dara O\u2019Shea gave away a penalty with a handball. \u201cWHERE ELSE COULD HIS ARMS BE,\u201d asked Des, but there was no need to panic, where there\u2019s Caoimh\u00edn Kelleher there\u2019s hope. Some day a movie might be made about the time he saved Cristy\u2019s spot-kick with, well, \u2018My Left Foot\u2019.<\/p>\n
But just as this result was heading for the next montage of mighty moments, along comes R\u00faben Neves in injury time. Hearts? Yup, in total, utter and absolute smithereens.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a cruel game,\u201d said Didi, \u201cbut when was the last time this team performed to a level where the whole nation was proud of them?\u201d True, that. If we wanted to give them a slap after Yerevan, after Lisbon you just wanted to give them a hug.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Has any international fixture involving an Irish team filled the nation with as much scared-witless-dread as this one?…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":75196,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[15561,4700,61,60,43,1842,4018],"class_list":["post-75195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-cristiano-ronaldo","tag-heimir-hallgrimsson","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news","tag-republic-of-ireland-mnt","tag-world-cup"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75195","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=75195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75195\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}