Wales host Northern Ireland in a friendly on Tuesday, a match that nobody wants.<\/p>\n
The fixture is taking place because both teams lost their World Cup play-off semi-finals on Thursday, against Bosnia-Herzegovina and Italy respectively.<\/p>\n
So, while the winners of those ties face each other in Zenica for a place at this summer’s tournament in the United States, Canada and Mexico, the losers must meet in Cardiff.<\/p>\n
The game will provide fringe players with a chance to impress their bosses, Craig Bellamy and Michael O’Neill, who are understandably keen to stress the value of this encounter.<\/p>\n
But for the fans and anyone else associated with these teams, this is a tough sell.<\/p>\n
“For the supporters, it’s a complete dead rubber. It is one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever heard – it’s pointless,” was the blunt assessment from former Northern Ireland midfielder Chris Brunt.<\/p>\n
The reality, however, is that international football’s governing bodies have decreed the game must go ahead, whether anyone likes it or not.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wales host Northern Ireland in a friendly on Tuesday, a match that nobody wants. The fixture is taking…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":555877,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[403,99],"class_list":["post-555876","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555876","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=555876"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555876\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/555877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=555876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=555876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=555876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}