{"id":619015,"date":"2026-09-17T15:12:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-17T15:12:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/619015\/"},"modified":"2026-09-17T15:12:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-17T15:12:09","slug":"republic-of-ireland-i-spoke-to-players-individually-about-israel-games-heimir-hallgrimsson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/619015\/","title":{"rendered":"Republic of Ireland: I spoke to players individually about Israel games – Heimir Hallgrimsson"},"content":{"rendered":"

At an extraordinary general meeting in July, delegates backed an FAI motion<\/a> to proceed with the games amid concerns that boycotting would cause “significant and lasting harm” for the association.<\/p>\n

However, the decision has come under increasing pressure, with a ‘Stop The Game’ campaign launched by Irish Sport for Palestine calling for a boycott.<\/p>\n

The campaign has received support from former manager Brian Kerr and ex-player James McClean,<\/a> and May’s friendly against Qatar in Dublin was disrupted when tennis balls thrown onto the pitch<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The armed Palestinian group Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October 2023, killing about 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages. In response, Israel launched a massive military offensive in Gaza. The United Nations believes the retaliation has killed more than 70,000 Palestinians.<\/p>\n

Israel has regularly denied committing genocide or war crimes and has said its actions in Gaza have been justified as a means of self-defence.<\/p>\n

Earlier this week, FAI director of football John Martin said the games had created a “very uncomfortable situation for everyone”<\/a> and insisted players “shouldn’t be in a position where they get criticised”.<\/p>\n

“We want to represent Ireland with the best games and performances that we can. That’s the agreement with all of us,” added Hallgrimsson. <\/p>\n

“Obviously we don’t all share the same opinion. That’s just human nature.”<\/p>\n

The Nations League games mark the Republic of Ireland’s first competitive action since their World Cup play-off semi-final defeat by the Czech Republic in March. <\/p>\n

Since the penalty shootout loss in Prague, they have played four friendlies, beating Grenada and Qatar and drawing with North Macedonia and Canada.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At an extraordinary general meeting in July, delegates backed an FAI motion to proceed with the games amid…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":619016,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[85,46,105],"class_list":["post-619015","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619015","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=619015"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619015\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/619016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=619015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=619015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=619015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}