Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
EVEN STRONGER THAN 2014 SIDE
NORTHERN IRELAND Michael O’neill feels “breathtaking” Germany’s squad could be even stronger than their World Cup-winning side of 2014. Die Mannschaft maintained their astonishing record of having never lost an away World Cup qualifier in their history by inflicting a first competitive home defeat on Northern Ireland since 2013. O’neill said: “It’s a huge education for our players and it will equip us well. One thing I’ll say about playing Germany, whoever you play after seems a lot easier!
“If you look at the starting line-up, their oldest players are 28, 29 – it gives you an indication of what’s coming in.
“I would imagine in Russia Germany are going to have a fantastic squad and possibly even a stronger squad than four years ago. It just seems there’s a neverending conveyor belt of talent coming through.”
German boss Joachim Low, whose men have faced Northern Ireland three times over the past 16 months, believes O’neill’s side could still join them at the finals.
“Northern Ireland have a population of just under 2,000,000 and they were absolutely competitive in our group,” Low noted.
“There has been hardly any gap in the group between them and us. Of course it will be tremendously difficult to beat a team like
Portugal or Italy over two games but they can do it.”