Midfielder Jason Knight has become the first Republic of Ireland player to oppose playing Israel in the Nations League on Sunday.<\/p>\n
The match will take place in the Hungarian city of Debrecen despite ongoing calls for Republic of Ireland to boycott the fixture.<\/p>\n
No tickets for the game will be made available to Irish supporters after the Football Association of Ireland (FAI) declined its allocation.<\/p>\n
“I don’t think the game should be going ahead but it is going ahead,” Knight told reporters after Thursday 1-0 loss to Kosovo.<\/p>\n
“We’ll have a deeper talk about it and what that means.<\/p>\n
“I’m quite experienced. None of us have gone through this scenario before but I’d like to think I’m experienced, thick-skinned and I can get through most things and that is what I will try and do.”<\/p>\n
Ireland manager Heimir Hallgrimsson said last week that some of his players felt uncomfortable about having to take part in the Israel games.<\/p>\n
The two nations are due to meet again on October 4 at another neutral venue in Backa Topola, Serbia.<\/p>\n
“I’ll try and focus on the football as much as I can,” added Knight, who plays for Championship club Bristol City.<\/p>\n
“It’s a bigger spotlight obviously and not focused on the football itself.<\/p>\n
“It’s very, very unusual and none of us have come into this scenario before so we’re learning on the fly as well.”<\/p>\n
The Republic of Ireland has long been a strong supporter of the Palestinian cause, with sympathy for Palestinians often linked to the country’s own history of British rule.<\/p>\n
Dublin formally recognised a Palestinian state in 2024 alongside Spain and Norway, and has repeatedly criticised Israel over the Gaza conflict.<\/p>\n
Israel strongly rejects allegations its conduct in Gaza amounts to genocide<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Midfielder Jason Knight has become the first Republic of Ireland player to oppose playing Israel in the Nations…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":627791,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-627790","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627790","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=627790"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627790\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/627791"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=627790"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=627790"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=627790"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}