{"id":790906,"date":"2026-10-03T18:04:15","date_gmt":"2026-10-03T18:04:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/790906\/"},"modified":"2026-10-03T18:04:15","modified_gmt":"2026-10-03T18:04:15","slug":"ireland-cut-short-news-conference-as-mood-darkens-further-before-israel-game-republic-of-ireland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/790906\/","title":{"rendered":"Ireland cut short news conference as mood darkens further before Israel game | Republic of Ireland"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Republic of Ireland\u2019s press conference on the eve of their second Nations League match against Israel in Serbia was cut short as the head coach, Heimir Hallgr\u00edmsson, fielded questions from Israeli journalists.<\/p>\n

Ireland beat Israel 3-0 in Hungary in their first match<\/a> on Tuesday after a turbulent buildup in which the Irish squad voted to fulfil the fixture despite unease among the team over the war in Gaza.<\/p>\n

During that match the Irish players wore armbands<\/a> and pointedly lowered their heads <\/a>while the Israeli national anthem played. There were no handshakes between the captains before kick-off.<\/p>\n

With the return leg taking place on Sunday in Backa Topola after the Football Association of Ireland (FAI) refused to host the match at home for security reasons<\/a>, it was the Ireland manager\u2019s pre-match press conference on Saturday that gave rise to new tensions.<\/p>\n

One reporter questioned Hallgr\u00edmsson on his thoughts about the incident on Wednesday during a Flydubai flight from the UAE to Israel<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat do you say about the people that you support? Their ideology is based on murder,\u201d one journalist asked. \u201cJust this week, one of them tried to kill 170 Israeli passengers, including 27 innocent children and thousands of others.\u201d<\/p>\n

An Irish press officer replied: \u201cWe are not doing any questions like this today. We are doing football questions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another journalist then addressed the Ireland manager: \u201cYour players call our players monkeys during the match \u2026\u201d, only to be immediately interrupted by an FAI official repeatedly insisting \u201cthat is completely untrue\u201d, while the microphone was taken away from the reporter.<\/p>\n

Republic of Ireland players bow their heads and wear black armbands in recognition of all lives lost in the Gaza conflict before facing Israel. Photograph: Bernadett Szab\u00f3\/Reuters<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t touch me, don\u2019t touch me,\u201d the journalist exclaimed, as the Irish delegation brought the press conference to an abrupt end.<\/p>\n

Israeli authorities have condemned the actions taken by the Irish players, with the Israeli foreign minister, Gideon Saar, accusing Dublin of being on \u201cthe wrong side of history\u201d.<\/p>\n

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\u201cSurviving this, coming out of it together as one would be a massive win for me. That is coming from my heart,\u201d Hallgr\u00edmsson said. \u201cAll the challenges that this team has gone through, all the criticism. Just surviving as a group after this game, that would be a big win for me and for this group, for the association. There\u2019s been a lot of emotions from the people in Ireland about this, and obviously that affects the players as well.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to do good, but it\u2019s always going to be a challenge when the environment is as noisy as it is. So we try to focus on the football side, and we\u2019ve done a lot of things to help in that area.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne change that we\u2019ve done in the last games is before we go on to the pitch, we do a little prayer and a huddle with the players and all the staff, just to cool our heads before we go on to the pitch.<\/p>\n

\u201cConor Coventry has taken that part, so he is now called Brother Coventry in the squad. But it\u2019s really good when you go into a high-intensity and big-pressure game like we\u2019ve been doing, to start the game with cool heads.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Republic of Ireland\u2019s press conference on the eve of their second Nations League match against Israel in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":790907,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[59,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-790906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-gb","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/790906","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=790906"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/790906\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/790907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=790906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=790906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=790906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}