Martin O’Neill: ‘Belgium will be up for the game’

Republic of Ireland manager Martin O'Neill has dismissed the idea that Belgium will be adversely affected by any disagreements within the camp when they take to the field against Ireland on Saturday afternoon in Bordeaux.

“There’s not much point in me commenting on this because I really don’t know anything about it,” he said, “but there’s talk about friction in the camp as soon as they don’t beat Italy. But Italy are an outstanding tournament team and that game, I’m not sure anybody in this room would have been able to call that game.

“Belgium will be up for the game. They have lost that game against Italy but they’ll be raring to go again and so are we.

“They would look at us and think that some of our players are not playing at the level that they are every week,” he said, “and they might think based on that they might have a bit of an advantage.”

Ireland, he added, though, firmly believe that they have strengths of their own that they can make count in their second group game and he is hoping to see some of the positive elements from the game against Sweden repeated this time around. “When we have the ball it’s important that we play with as much confidence as we did the other night.”

O’Neill welcomed Northern Ireland’s win on Thursday but said that his priority is very much to ensure that his team makes it out of the group stage. As for Ireland’s opponents, he said: “If they went on to win the competition, it would not be a major surprise to me.”

O'Neill confirmed that Jon Walters will miss the game meaning there will be at least one change to the Ireland starting line-up. John O'Shea's presence at the press conference suggests that he will again captain the team which in turn means Robbie Keane will not come in.

Instead, the most likely replacements are James McClean or Stephen Ward with the latter potentially coming in at left back so that Robbie Brady can be used in midfield.