Ireland head coach Heimir Hallgr\u00edmsson says the prime objective of Tuesday night was to emerge from the Aviva still with a live chance of qualifying for the World Cup.<\/p>\n
Ireland\u2019s 1-0 win over 10-man Armenia is unlikely to feature in any glorious montage of famous victories but it was enough to take this qualification campaign down to the last window \u2013 at home to Portugal and away to Hungary.<\/p>\n
But Hungary\u2019s 2-2 draw with Portugal has made Ireland\u2019s task that bit harder. If Ireland lose to Portugal next month and Hungary beat Armenia, then our World Cup aspirations would be over before the trip to Budapest.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe knew we\u2019d need to go to Hungary and win. Now we might need a point against Portugal or need a favour from Armenia in Yerevan. There is a spirit in Armenia that is noticeable. They matched Hungary in Budapest,\u201d said Hallgr\u00edmsson on Tuesday night.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou Irish always like to go down to the wire. Okay, let\u2019s do that. The next window is a new dawn. We just needed three points [tonight] to be alive, to have a chance. It was always going to be a tough match. Players will play at a higher quality next time.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can match Hungary. We\u2019ve shown that. Portugal away, tough game, incredible Portuguese crowd, and we played well against them. With the Irish crowd we can get something from that game. The power of the media means it is your decision to see it half-full or half-empty.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hallgr\u00edmsson feels anxiousness was a significant contributing factor in Tuesday night\u2019s display against Armenia.<\/p>\n
\u201cNerves, because it was a must-win game. You sometimes become passive when you have nerves,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe red card released those nerves. We won ball higher up the pitch and put pressure on them. We showed bravery in the second half.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe said before this camp that we would take a scrappy 1-0 win. So, we cannot be unhappy. We won now, we didn\u2019t concede early, we kept a clean sheet so we\u2019ll take the positives and move on.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe got the win. It was not beautiful and we should have got more goals but I\u2019ll take it all day.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ireland head coach Heimir Hallgr\u00edmsson says the prime objective of Tuesday night was to emerge from the Aviva…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":81199,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4700,61,60,43,1842,4018],"class_list":["post-81198","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","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\/81198","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=81198"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81198\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/81199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}