Ireland draw Bosnia & Herzegovina in Euro play-offs

Ireland face a Friday the 13th first play-off leg away to Bosnia and Herzegovina with Edin Dzeko and co. coming to Dublin for the return leg at the Aviva stadium three days later.

Martin O’Neill enjoyed mixed fortunes in the draw in Nyon with the Irish, having avoided the most highly ranked of the seeded sides, Ukraine, early on then missing out on Hungary who became a 50-50 shot with the Bosnians as things progressed. Ireland, though, fared well when it came to deciding the order of the games and the manager will be pleased that he and his players get to travel first even if he remains guarded about it all.

“If there is any slight advantage to be had for us it’s that the second game is in Dublin,” he says. “We need to perform out in Bosnia to make sure that the second game in Dublin means something. We have a chance.

“We have some problems to negotiate with suspensions and who knows what will happen in the next few weeks, injury is always a possibility, but we will go for it and give it everything we’ve got. We had terrific results against Germany, the draw out in Germany and a home win, because that’s so recent we can draw real confidence from it.”

The Bosnians, he knows, will present a major challenge for Ireland. The team qualified for the World Cup in Brazil last year and had been seeded ahead of both Belgium and Wales to make it to the European championships for the first time too.

A desperately poor start to their campaign left them playing catch up from an early stage, though, and only a late recovery, during which they won five of their last six games, saved them from missing out even on third place to either Israel or Cyprus in the group.

Dzeko was comfortably their top scorer with seven goals in seven games but they have talented players elsewhere too, particularly in midfield where his Roma team mate Miralem Pjanic as well as Lazio’s Senad Lulic will be regarded as posing major threats.

They conceded a lot of goals over the course of the campaign, however, starting in their opening games which they lost 12-1 at home to Cyprus despite the fact that the visitors had arrived in Zenica having failed to scored in any of their previous 10 outings.

Even after they had rediscovered their winning ways they again let in two against the Cypriots last week, a game they would have felt they needed to win, trailing 2-1 shortly before half-time before emerging in the end with a 3-2 victory.

Against Wales, one of the world’s top sides these days if the Fifa rankings are to be believed, they did rather better, securing a scoreless draw in Cardiff then beating Chris Coleman’s men 2-0 at home. They were not especially convincing on either occasion, however, and they were beaten well enough away to the Belgians.

The away trip is likely to pose a very considerable challenge to fans wanting to follow the team. The journey, most obviously through Germany or Turkey, is less straightforward than Stockholm would have been while the size of the venue would suggest that the FAI will get only around 750 tickets for the game, something that may well put further strain on the relationship between the association and supporters groups.

Ireland will be without John O’Shea and Jon Walters for the away leg with both players suspended. O’Neill’s counterpart, Mehmed Bazdarevic, will be missing young Everton midfielder Muhamed Besic who will serve the final part of a three match ban for throwing chewing gum at an Andorran opponent back in September when the two sides meet for the first time.

Ireland have only played Bosnia and Herzegovina once before, in a 2012 friendly in Dublin where a goal by Shane Long game the home side a win.

“There was a chance we’d be drawn against Ireland,” says 31 year-old Mensur Mujdza, a defender at Freiburg who made eifght appearances for the Bosnians during qualifying, “and we were ready for that. I think that Ireland play similarly to Wales and their latest result against Germany says enough about their quality. It will not be easy, but it wouldn’t be easy against Slovenia, Denmark or Norway either.”

Euro 2016 play-off draw:

Ukraine v Slovenia

Sweden v Denmark

Bosnia and Herzegovina v IRELAND

Norway v Hungary

More to follow