O’Neill: we’ll take belief from this loss
MICHAEL O’Neill has told his Northern Ireland players that any side they face in the World Cup play-offs next month will be inferior to the mighty Germans.
Germany, with a commanding performance, inflicted a competitive defeat upon Northern Ireland at Windsor Park for the first time in four years with a 3-1 victory.
Joachim Low’s men scored inside two minutes after a stunning strike from Sebastian Rudy, doubled their advantage through Sandro Wagner and then sealed the win in the last 10 minutes through Joashua Kimmich.
Josh Magennis headed home a much deserved consolation goal for Northern Ireland.
“It’s a huge education for our players and it will serve us well, admitted O’Neill.
“One thing I’ll say about playing Germany, whoever you play after seems a lot easier. Should we be in the play-offs in November we can take belief and strength from this performance.”
While Germany, with the win last night, qualified for the World Cup finals Northern Ireland are still not officially assured of their place in the play-offs.
Victory against Norway on Sunday would eradicate all the doubt. But O’Neill (right), before he prepares fcr Sunday’s clash in Oslo, is still coming to terms with last night’s defeat and how his players had to battle back after that early goal from Rudy — which was suker punch for Northern Ireland.
“It’s the worst start we could have had,” sighed O’Neill.
“There’s very little you could do about it, maybe the clearance could have been better, but the quality of the strike so early in the game, we probably had a number of players who hadn’t touched the ball.
“It never gave us a chance to settle into the game, the approach we had was designed to stay in the game as long as possible, you can’t go and chase it too early against a team of this quality. It made it difficult for us, the first 15, 20 minutes it really knocked us back.” Northern Ireland, with a mix of Premier League, Championship, League One and Scottish Premiership players were playing against some of the biggest superstars in the game.
O’Neill believes his players will have benefitted from last night’s experience as the number one team in the world and he admitted as a coach it was the most formidable challenge of his man- agerial career. He added: “As a coach there’s no bigger challenge to try and set your team up to play against that level of opposition.
“I’m not sure if there’s a system you can come up with that can contain Germany. The quality of their play at times is breathtaking, in terms of how they move the ball and the movement of their players. Even our players in the Premier League, they’ll get that level when they play against the top sides in the Premier League, not when they play teams who are just in it.
“That level of movement, how you deal with that, is at the highest level. We had two League One players, Championship players, they don’t play that style and against players of that calibre.
“They had five Bayern Munich players in starting line-up.
“I would imagine in Russia at the finals Germany are going to have a fantastic squad and possibly even a stronger squad than four years ago. It just seems to be there’s a never-ending conveyer belt of talent coming through.
“They’ll be a formidable team to beat in Russia.”
Northern Ireland fly to Oslo this morning for the game on Sunday night.
“We are second in the group n and that won’t change, whatever happens on Sunday,” states O’Neill. “The play-off game will take care of itself regardless of what happens in Norway, providing we’re in it.”