{"id":626586,"date":"2026-09-25T01:10:15","date_gmt":"2026-09-25T01:10:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/626586\/"},"modified":"2026-09-25T01:10:15","modified_gmt":"2026-09-25T01:10:15","slug":"jason-knight-says-ireland-players-will-have-a-deeper-talk-about-israel-games-on-friday-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/626586\/","title":{"rendered":"Jason Knight says Ireland players will \u2018have a deeper talk\u2019 about Israel games on Friday \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Midfielder Jason Knight believes Ireland\u2019s<\/a> Nations League games against Israel should not go ahead, but an eleventh-hour boycott of the games by the Irish players is not on the cards. <\/p>\n

The Irish players will meet on Friday morning to formalise a unified position ahead of the meeting with Israel in Debrecen on Sunday, and while nothing is yet confirmed, it is understood they are likely to at least donate their match fees from both Israel games to a charity operating in Gaza. They will proceed with the games, however, despite mounting public pressure to withdraw. <\/p>\n

\u201cLook it\u2019s difficult, the manager, and Dara [O\u2019Shea], and Nathan [Collins] spoke well about it,\u201d said Knight after Ireland\u2019s chastening 1-0 loss to Kosovo in Pristina. \u201cI don\u2019t think the game, obviously, should be going ahead, but it is going ahead. We\u2019ll have a deeper talk about it and what that means, we\u2019ll get our thoughts as a group and go from there.\u201d <\/p>\n

Asked whether he considered not joining the Irish squad in advance of these fixtures, Knight said, \u201cI think it was a difficult one, obviously. It\u2019s obviously big talk in Ireland. I have been focusing on my football in England in the Championship [with Bristol City]. But I knew this was coming so I had a think about it. We had chats about it with the players, and more senior players on what the step will be.\u201d <\/p>\n

Knight, meanwhile, admitted the Irish performance in Kosovo fell well short of their standard. The game was settled by Vedat Muriqi\u2019s late goal, but where Caoimh\u00edn Kelleher was forced to pull off a string of fine saves and Jayson Molumby made a stunning goal-line clearance in the first half, Kosovo goalkeeper Arijanet Muric had to make just one save over the entire game. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not the way you want to start the campaign, they\u2019re obviously a good team but I think we were definitely below our level,\u201d said Knight. \u201cIt\u2019s a disappointing goal to give away because it would have been a good result with the clean sheet. <\/p>\n

\u201c[We were] maybe a bit too passive at times. Didn\u2019t get up to the ball. Second half, it got a bit better. But I think when you let good players around your box too easily, especially with the threats they\u2019ve got, like you see with the goal, you\u2019re going to come unstuck sooner rather than later. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe didn\u2019t give our forward players enough chances to score goals. They pinned us back a bit too much. But I do think there were even patches in the game and they took their big chance and we didn\u2019t take our half-chances.\u201d <\/p>\n

When asked, Knight said he did not believe the intense public scrutiny around the Israel games affected preparations for Kosovo. \u201cI don\u2019t think so, it\u2019s been very football-focused, looking forward to the Kosovo game. Nothing distracted us, it was just a disappointing night.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Midfielder Jason Knight believes Ireland\u2019s Nations League games against Israel should not go ahead, but an eleventh-hour boycott…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":626587,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,202176,43,6864,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-626586","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-nations-league","tag-news","tag-republic-of-ireland-mnt","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626586","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=626586"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626586\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/626587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=626586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=626586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=626586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}