Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
It’ll be 90 mins of hard work & concentration.. but we can do it
AZZURRI SLAYER O’NEILL GIVES BARA HOPE
AFTER plotting Italy’s downfall in stunning fashion in France, Martin O’neill has told Northern Ireland to believe in a similar fairytale in Parma.
A gleaming highlight of O’neill’s five-year tenure as Republic of Ireland boss was a pulsating 1-0 victory over the Azzurri at the Euro 2016 finals in Lille.
Robbie Brady’s late winner went down in Irish football folklore, reduced grown men to tears and paved a path to the knockout stages of the competition.
Almost five years later, O’neill insists Ian Baraclough can follow in his footsteps against one of Europe’s powerhouse nations.
“Is it beyond Northern Ireland’s capabilities of getting a result? Absolutely not,” he said.
“The Italians are a very good side but you know where you stand and you go into a game like this accepting there’ll be no moments of respite. It’ll be 90 minutes of hard work and concentration. You can’t switch off for a moment because top class players will seize upon that and take advantage.”
O’neill (below), who stepped down as Republic boss in 2018, won 64 caps for Northern Ireland and captained the country at the 1982 World Cup in Spain.
And he believes the current crop of northern stars like Steven Davis, Jonny Evans and Stuart Dallas boast a similar DNA to Billy Bingham’s famous teams of the 1980s.
“Pound for pound, player for player, it will be very difficult against Italy, so you’ve got to find an extra percentage to try and match these teams,” he said.
“Under Billy Bingham, we were able to find that extra percentage and that’s something that has also been evident in recent years. It has been a hallmark of recent Northern
Ireland teams that they’ve been able to find big moments, performances and results. They are steeped in that.” That famous win over Italy in 2016 stands out as a highlight of O’neill’s managerial career, even if it took a while for the magnitude of the feat to sink in.
“It probably took 24 or 36 hours for it to fully enter the psyche,” he said. “Immediately after the game in Lille we were just delighted to have extended our time in the competition.
“We had some uncomfortable moments against Italy - as you’d expect - but we were able to see them through and the players stuck to the plan we’d outlined beforehand.
“We actually had a great chance a couple of minutes before Robbie’s goal and didn’t take it and you’re inclined to think ‘well, that’s it, that’s our chance gone’.
“But Robbie came up with the winner and it was a great night.”