Roy Keane: Ireland face hardest last 16 clash

Roy Keane believes that Ireland have the toughest of all the second round tasks at these European Championship but the Corkman is adamant that they are capable of causing another upset at the tournament if the players perform the way they did against Italy in Lille.

“Wednesday was a great night; a really great performance,” he says. “The players gave themselves every chance because they played with a lot of skill and with a lot of spirit... now we’re just looking to get ourselves ready and hopefully it’ll be the same in the next round,” Keane said.

There have been, he said in reply to a question about the success of the “underdogs” so far, “no surprises really” because the teams that have qualified looked strong beforehand and deserved to progress but because of the way the competition is structured, the “smaller” nations will, he accepts, have to punch above their weight from here on in if they want to stick around.

“The big challenge now is with the format and the seedings,” he says. “Now there is a big challenge for the teams like us as we come up against very good sides. Everyone has a tough game now but we probably have the hardest game; the host nation, the most days to recovers; they’ve obviously very, very strong, really good players and they look like they’re enjoying the tournament, enjoying the pressure which doesn’t seem to be getting to them. But hopefully it might get to them a little bit on Sunday. Let’s hope so.”

The likes of Slovakia, Hungary and Iceland who play Germany, Belgium and England respectively might give the Ireland assistant manager a bit of an argument regarding exactly who has it hardest over the weekend, but it is clear that Ireland are facing something of an “away game” against Didier Deschamps side in Lyon where 80 per cent of the crowd is expected to be supporting the hosts.

“They have a few more days to recover and the almost all of the tickets but we just have to roll up our sleeves and get on with it,” he says. “The big question that everyone will be asking can we get back up to that level again, particularly with regard to the energy levels. We had a long journey back with a few of the players getting drug tested, which delayed us and now we have to get down there for this game. There’s a question mark over Wardy [Stephen Ward](who did not train this morning) but Jon [Walters]did a bit although whether you want to make changes after everyone doing so well is something you’d have to consider but we’ll gauge that over the next couple of days.”

“The French have a few more days to recover and that’s part of our job on the medical side to make sure that we’re ready t go. We have to trust the players to get on with the job. If we perform the way we did the other night then we’ll give ourselves a chance. We didn’t do that against Belgium, we never had a foothold in the game.

“We’ll probably have to play even better on Sunday against the host and we won’t have the fans there to keep us going the way they did the other night but we’ll be ready.”

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