In the car on the way to the Aviva on Friday morning, the Ireland manager and his captain got to talking about the night of nights. The last 16 of the Euros in France, June 27th, 2016. Iceland 2, England 1. But this wasn’t Heimir Hallgrímsson and Seamus Coleman wallowing in Remember When. The opposite, if anything.
“That night was kind of special,” Hallgrímsson said when he brought up the conversation in his pre-match press conference an hour later. “Everything we did that night succeeded – tactical, finishing, taking our chances, defending our goal. And nothing that England tried that night succeeded. It was one of those days. Hopefully it will come again tomorrow.
“But we know that even if we have our best game, it still isn’t sure that that will lead into a victory against a good team like England. We need to make sure that we have the best game that we can tomorrow, and we’ll see what that gives us.”
Ultimately, that’s what these games are. When mid-rank countries like Ireland take on the cream of the crop like England, emotion and pride can only do so much of the heavy lifting. For an upset to happen, the formula has to hit the way it did for that Iceland team eight years ago. Succeed with everything you do and hope the other crowd have a stone-cold ‘mare.
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As it happens, the one thing Ireland don’t lack in this type of fixture is experience. Their dance card over recent seasons has been punched by an unusually high number of the game’s best international sides. Since the start of 2020, they’ve had no fewer than 10 matches against teams in the top 10 of the Fifa world rankings. That’s unusual – they only had two such games in the four years before that.
As for results, they’ve been more or less what you think they’ve been. Since the start of Euro 2012, when Ireland lost 3-1 to Croatia (eighth in the world at the time), they’ve played 20 matches against countries ranked in the top 10. It hasn’t gone well.
The full record for the past dozen years reads: Played 20, Won 1, Lost 14, Drew 5. Scored 9, Conceded 43. Their only win was against Germany in 2015, the Shane Long game. They failed to score in 12 of those matches. The only time they found the net more than once was a 2-2 draw with Belgium in March 2022.
Coleman has been around the place throughout that period, albeit injuries have kept him out of half of the games against top-10 opposition. His best result in those games was a 0-0 draw against Portugal in the Aviva in 2021. That’s a lot of sweat and toil for very little reward.
‘I think for Ireland to go forward, we have to play as a good collective team. We will never succeed unless we do it as a unit, as a group’
— Heimir Hallgrímsson
Pound for pound, Ireland’s best performance in recent years was probably the 1-0 defeat at home to France in 2023, the night Benjamin Pavard pounced on Josh Cullen’s sideways pass to ping one into the top corner. Proof, as if it was needed, that you’re only one mistake away from disaster when you’re playing against the elite of the game.
“They’re the games you want to be involved in,” says Coleman. “You want to play against the best at all times. I think in some of those games you mentioned, we gave a good account of ourselves and we were just missing that last little bit at times in some of them.
“I think for the younger lads in there, who have slowly but surely gained that experience against these big nations, nights like tomorrow become that bit more normal for them. I know it’s England, but we’ve had some big nations come here. It’s another one tomorrow, and everyone’s looking forward to it and can’t wait to get going.”
Though the bare numbers look pretty chronic, Coleman isn’t completely gilding the lily when he says Ireland gave a good account of themselves in some of those games. France and the Netherlands at home, Portugal home and away – these were games that mattered, and Ireland at least can say they weren’t outclassed.
In John O’Shea’s time involved, they’ve played six matches against top-10 opposition, with five defeats and a friendly draw against Belgium to show for it. O’Shea lived his footballing life up where the air is thin, but he wears his experiences lightly. The key thing he tries to get across to them now is that success isn’t some far-off pipe dream. A game is a game, no matter who you are playing.
“You know the level of detail and planning that goes into the game beforehand,” he said this week. “And also, the breakdown in what you give to the players in terms of assessing teams’ strengths and assessing areas you hope to exploit. It’s about how important moments are in the game and how you need to take chances when they come about.
“The most important thing for players to realise is that they’ve been really present in those games and had an impact in those games. They’ve had chances in those games and they’ve had moments where the result could have been very different. So it’s a blend of all those elements together. That was the most important thing for me when I was a player – to know you have a real chance in the game.”
‘It’s about full belief going into the game that we’ll have moments, we’ll have opportunities to hurt them. And at home, there’s a very big chance of that for us’
— Will Smallbone
Do Ireland have a real chance against England? Probably not. Lee Carsley has left a lot of his frontline stars at home, but he will still be able to field a team of Champions League players. By contrast, Hallgrímsson has one midfielder capable of holding down a starting place in a Premier League team.
Will Smallbone – for it is he – has had a reasonable start to the season, albeit in a Southampton team that have lost all three of their opening games. In his short Ireland career so far, he has already faced Portugal, the Netherlands and Belgium. Let’s be kind and call them learning experiences.
“Being in the game, making sure you’re present in the game throughout the whole game – that’s so important,” Smallbone says. “Because moments can change very quickly against the top players. In each game we’ve had that you mentioned there, we’ve had opportunities in the game up until the last minutes.
“So from our side, it’s about full belief going into the game that we’ll have moments, we’ll have opportunities to hurt them. And at home, there’s a very big chance of that for us.”
In all of this, there’s an element of players saying what they have to say and even convincing themselves that down is up and black is white. As well they should. What use would it be to Smallbone if we reminded him that, far from having opportunities against Portugal in the summer up until the last minutes, Ireland were 3-0 down on the hour mark and did well to keep it like that until the end?
Ireland’s players aren’t fools. They know what England are capable of. More to the point, they know what they themselves are capable of. Most of all, they know that their new manager’s reign isn’t going to be judged on what happens against teams like England or France or Portugal.
A result on Saturday would be something to behold, clearly. But Hallgrímsson’s bread will be buttered in games such as that next Tuesday against Greece, a country against whom Ireland have a laughably awful record. Between friendlies and qualifiers, Ireland have played Greece five times under four managers and their best result was a 0-0 ground out by a Don Givens-managed side back in November 2002. Otherwise, they’ve lost every time.
That’s what has to change. Not specifically results against Greece, but against the likes of Greece. They lie 50th in the world rankings, Ireland are ranked at 60. The only realistic way to rise up the ladder is to start compiling results against the teams around you, a task Ireland have been spectacularly bad at for a while now.
In October 2017, James McClean’s winner in Cardiff against Wales saw Martin O’Neill’s side secure victory against what was then the team ranked 13th in the world. In the seven years since, Ireland have recorded precisely four non-friendly wins against teams in the top 100 in the Fifa rankings. Those were Georgia (91st) in 2019, Luxembourg (93rd) in 2021, Scotland (45th) and Armenia (92nd) in 2022.
That’s the gig, right there. Stephen Kenny can claim to have been unlucky in one respect – a full 20 per cent of his games in charge were against France, the Netherlands, England and Belgium. But he didn’t lose his job because of those matches. He lost it because of defeats to Greece (52nd and 51st when they beat Ireland home and away), Ukraine (27th), Armenia (91st), Luxembourg (98th) and Serbia (30th).
In Hallgrímsson’s time with Iceland, they became known for eye-catching results against star-stuffed teams. While the England one is the most famous, they also beat the Netherlands twice and drew with Portugal and Argentina at major tournaments.
But the reason they got to those tournaments in the first place was their ability to take points and wins against the likes of Turkey, Finland, Ukraine, Croatia and the Czech Republic. It’s a long time since Ireland fished successfully in those waters.
“Whether we’re playing superstars or the best teams, it shouldn’t be a lot of difference in how you prepare,” Hallgrimsson said yesterday. “You don’t always have time to be changing from this to that. Just be better in what you’re doing.
“And I think for Ireland to go forward, we have to play as a good collective team. We will never succeed unless we do it as a unit, as a group. So whether we play England or Greece, it’s kind of the philosophy, the same way of working.”
It would be nice if that way of working got a result against England. How it fares against Greece is likely to be far more telling.
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