Ireland U17s thread

That keeper is awful. Has he actually come and won anything today.

Produced a big 2nd half performance but not likely to see a better chance than those two.

A draw would be huge from here

Tweaking the formation & moving Rocco Vata inside has made a huge difference

Great finish that. 22 has had a rough afternoon defending down that side

Don't think they deserve to win 4-1. credit to the lads for even having a sniff second half.

Some of these lads are just below the quality for elite level. We have a few nice players in this group but it is not as flush as we pretend. Zefi, Ferizaj and Vata are nice players and is about it imo

We have some terrific players coming through, I know Zefi is a bit over the top on occasions, but I cant remember being excited by anyone since Duff and Robbie.

Overall I thought we played very well against a top team.

4-1 is flattering, and we had several good chances to go level at 2-all.

In the end the lads were dead on their feet and two late goals embellished the scoreline but there's a lot of positives to take from that.

Maccatacca wrote:

That goal difference will come back to haunt us.

Head to head, will only really hurt us if we finish level with Portugal

well if we beat the other two teams in the group, that would give us a decent chance of qualifying. Nothing other than 2 wins now at this stage will probably be enough

Nialler wrote:

Left foot wrote:

We were better going forward than we were defending.... I never thought I'd say that about an ireland team.

The trio of Zefi, Vata and Ferizaj are all exciting. Thought omahoney did well too.

My first time seeing Heffernan and he looked poor, hopefully just had a bad game.

I would agree about all of that except O Mahony. Butchered big chances and moves tended to break down when the ball came near him. Did have a nice header disallowed though. Our Keeper and defence were very very bad but I suppose the positive is our attacking players were very good and we are never short a defender. Zefi ws the best player on the pitch, he got tired after about 75 but before then he nearly did what he wanted

Very harsh on O'Mahony. The service to him wasn't the best today but he still ended up the ball in the back of the net twice. Like Zefi and a few other he got tired towards the end (possibly due to the heat) but I'd normally back him on putting that chance away. There's a reason he has 9 goals in 9 internationals