It took two well-taken strikes to break down Northern Ireland’s defence and deny them a chance of a first World Cup finals appearance since 1986.<\/p>\n
Newcastle midfielder Tonali put the four-time winners ahead with a stunning volley, before ex-Everton forward Kean fired low into the bottom corner. <\/p>\n
“Tonali scores a good goal from the edge of the box, and it gives them a lift,” admitted Hull City’s McNair.<\/p>\n
“The crowd was getting on their backs at times and we wanted to stay in the game as long as possible. The second goal killed the game off.<\/p>\n
“We could have played the ball better at times. I thought times we played through the press and there was lots of space and I think we maybe rushed our attacks.”<\/p>\n
Despite a valiant effort, O’Neill’s men struggled to create chances and had just one shot on target from their eight attempts.<\/p>\n
Northern Ireland were missing key players such as Conor Bradley, Dan Ballard and Ali McCann through injury, with the average age of their side at just 22.5 years – the second-youngest since World War Two.<\/p>\n
McNair was the only player in the starting line-up who played in their last major tournament, the 2016 Euros in France.<\/p>\n
But he added the side had a “bright future” as they look to bounce back in a friendly against Wales on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
“There is talent throughout the team,” said McNair.<\/p>\n
“Players who didn’t get on the pitch tonight as well, there is a lot of strength and depth and I think Northern Ireland have a bright future to come.<\/p>\n
“We have got a really young group, so there will be many years of this team and tonight we will learn from and go forward.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It took two well-taken strikes to break down Northern Ireland’s defence and deny them a chance of a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":497509,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-497508","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\/497508","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=497508"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497508\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/497509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=497508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=497508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=497508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}