{"id":792362,"date":"2026-10-05T05:24:19","date_gmt":"2026-10-05T05:24:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/792362\/"},"modified":"2026-10-05T05:24:19","modified_gmt":"2026-10-05T05:24:19","slug":"republic-of-ireland-1-1-israel-heimir-hallgrimsson-says-israel-tried-to-intimidate-us-amid-spitting-row","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/792362\/","title":{"rendered":"Republic of Ireland 1-1 Israel: Heimir Hallgrimsson says Israel ‘tried to intimidate us’ amid spitting row"},"content":{"rendered":"

Republic of Ireland head coach Heimir Hallgrimsson said he felt Israel were “trying to intimidate” his team amid allegations of spitting during Sunday’s tense Uefa Nations League draw. <\/p>\n

The teams clashed at half-time in the 1-1 draw, played behind closed doors in Serbia, with the Irish Times, external<\/a> reporting that Republic of Ireland head of athletic performance Damien Doyle alleged he had been spat at by an Israel player.<\/p>\n

On television pictures, a voice can be heard saying “he spat on me” as the players made their way down the tunnel at TSC Arena. <\/p>\n

“I don’t want to get involved in that, but it’s been like this these two games. It’s tense, it’s a lot of emotions,” Hallgrimsson told Off The Ball, external<\/a> when asked about the incident. <\/p>\n

“[It] was an accusation of spitting on someone but I didn’t see it. No, we don’t want to talk about this. This will be reviewed, probably like everything else that’s happened between the two teams. <\/p>\n

“I felt like they were trying to intimidate us from kick-off but I give a lot of credit to the players to stay calm. It could have been a game of yellow and red cards but we were composed, the players were composed, they did well in controlling emotions.” <\/p>\n

Asked about the half-time incident, Israel head coach Ran Ben-Shimon said he “didn’t see anything”.<\/p>\n

“[At] half-time I was in the dressing room, my room, with my staff,” he said. <\/p>\n

“I didn’t see anything. When I get the chance to check I will get back to you.” <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Republic of Ireland head coach Heimir Hallgrimsson said he felt Israel were “trying to intimidate” his team amid…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":792363,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[218,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-792362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-football","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/792362","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=792362"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/792362\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/792363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=792362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=792362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=792362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}