{"id":201050,"date":"2025-10-15T04:59:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-15T04:59:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/201050\/"},"modified":"2025-10-15T04:59:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-15T04:59:09","slug":"republic-of-ireland-1-0-armenia-tigran-barseghyan-lost-his-head-finn-azaz-on-headbutt-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/201050\/","title":{"rendered":"Republic of Ireland 1-0 Armenia: Tigran Barseghyan &#8216;lost his head&#8217; &#8211; Finn Azaz on headbutt"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The nervy win in Dublin moves the Republic of Ireland up to third in Group F, a point behind Hungary, who boosted their chances of securing a play-off place with a dramatic late draw against Portugal. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The group is delicately poised with two games remaining. If Hungary beat Armenia in their next game, the Republic of Ireland must earn at least a point to take the battle for second place into their trip to Budapest on 16 November. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The Republic of Ireland&#8217;s chances have twice been hit by late goals during this window, having conceded a 91st-minute Ruben Neves goal in Saturday&#8217;s 1-0 loss to Portugal in Lisbon. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">However, Azaz hopes the Irish players can build on that performance and Tuesday&#8217;s crucial win in their quest to upset Cristiano Ronaldo and co in Dublin on 13 November.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;We know it&#8217;s going to be tough, but we&#8217;ll take confidence from last week and this game and we&#8217;ll be confident we can do something special,&#8221; Azaz added.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;It&#8217;s going to be a big occasion, we saw the last game we can compete and they&#8217;re top players, but we have to be able to compete and no doubt we&#8217;ll be right up for it.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Armenia boss Yegishe Melikyan said Barseghyan apologised to his team-mates after the game. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\"> &#8220;Of course, the red card changed the game. It was a mistake,&#8221; said Melikyan. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;He took responsibility. He said sorry to the whole dressing room. But, if a player makes a mistake, it is also my mistake and for that I apologise.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;If there was no red card and we played 11 v 11, I think we could have got a good result. I thought we could have won, but we must go forward and I think we can get good results in the near future.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The nervy win in Dublin moves the Republic of Ireland up to third in Group F, a point&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":201001,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-201050","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=201050"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201050\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/201001"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=201050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=201050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=201050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}