HAREIDE AND HIS TEAM GO ON THE ATTACK EARLY BY TURNING HEAT UP
THE best stuff is never scripted, and Age Hareide wasn’t here for a spot of stand-up. Rather some withering putdowns of this Republic of Ireland team. The Denmark manager began by reading from a preprepared statement after his side had come in for some criticism at home following Saturday’s stalemate in Copenhagen. He wanted to get some things off his chest and was going on about the number of passes his players had made — 587 compared to Ireland’s 206 — and their successful completion rate of 85 per cent. Nobody was really interested. Eyes rolled, tuts abounded. Thankfully Hareide is far better at improv. The good stuff was off the cuff. Like when he was asked whether he expected Martin O’Neill’s side to offer more of an attacking threat in front of their own fans. ‘No,’ he stated. ‘They just want us to make a mistake. That’s okay but I haven’t got the patience to play like that. We will just try to attack Ireland, score a goal and take it from there. ‘I don’t expect them to go higher [up the pitch] than they did in Copenhagen. If you look at their stats from the qualification, nothing seems to go in that direction. They play better away from home and score more goals away from home. ‘I saw the game they played in Serbia, they lost 1-0, at home against Wales they drew 0-0, they won in Wales 1-0 and at the beginning of the qualification they drew in Serbia 2-2. They were the key matches in qualification, and I think they will play the same way.’ Hareide (left) scoffed at David Meyler’s suggestion that the Danish
players don’t have the same passion or desire as Ireland, and doesn’t envisage a problem if they were to fall behind away from home. ‘It will be more difficult to get back in the game if Ireland score first, it will make them more eager to defend so that is difficult. But we know that even if they score first, one goal will get us there. ‘It’s a fantastic opportunity that we don’t have to win to come to the World Cup. We have to take that.’ Sevilla centre back Simon Kjaer added: ‘We can fight with them if they want to fight, we will take that up but that’s not our game-plan. We want to get the ball down, play it on the floor, move them around and then hopefully we score.’ Hareide agreed, but accepted they will have to improve. ‘We said after the game that our speed of our passing [needs to be quicker], we’ll try to play the ball through the midfield lines, try for higher speed and less touches on the ball. We had the opportunities to score in Copenhagen and I’m sure we will have them again.’