ROTTERDAM AND BLAST

Devastated Davis rues the one that got away

FOR all its promise of glory and gilded moments, football can be the cruellest of sports.

Dutch captain Virgil van Dijk’s rueful smile after bumping into Steven Davis in the bowels of the De Kuip Stadium told you that.

An appreciative aside for a former Southampton team-mate but also a quiet acknowledgement of what had gone before. Thursday’s Rotterdam rollercoaster was a fabled moment stolen from Davis’ grasp in the flicker of an eye.

A tale of sporting romance trumped by reality in the most painful of fashions.

1-0 up on 75 minutes, Josh Magennis embracing potential folklore, 3,500 Northern Ireland fans showering themselves in euphoria and beer at the far end of the arena.

And then bang, bang, bang. No wonder Liverpool star and recently crowned UEFA player of the year van Dijk offered a consoling smile. “It was a sore one to take,” said Davis. “It feels like a missed opportunity from the position we got ourselves in late on in the game. If we had come away with a win, obviously it would have been a massive, massive result for us.

“It was probably a bit harsh to lose the game the way we did.”

Memphis Depay levelled in the 80th minute but even as the Group C qualifier entered added time, Michael O’neill’s men were four minutes away from a valuable point.

That was until Luuk de Jong forced the ball home in fortuitous fashion in the 91st minute and Depay sank the knife further with his second of the night in the 94th.

“In terms of game plan, it had been going very well,” said Rangers star Davis. “We almost needed a perfect night and it looked like it was destined to be when we took the lead. We’re disappointed with the goals we conceded and the second one is a bit of a freak. Maybe after their equaliser we started dropping off a bit deeper and stopped getting up to the ball as much but we had put so much into the game. We did all we could but unfortunately it wasn’t enough. Ultimately, we didn’t get the result we wanted.”

While it can’t yet be ruled out mathematically, Northern Ireland face a near impossible task of qualifying from Group C.

The Germans and Dutch are likely to cement ownership of the top two spots in the pool when they travel to Estonia and Belarus respectively tomorrow.

And Davis knows Rotterdam and last month’s 2-0 defeat to Germany in Belfast were heavy blows.

He said: “We’ve got two hugely difficult games but just have to give it our all. The quality of the opposition makes it really tough but we have to give our all.

“Beyond that we’ll see what happens in terms of play-offs.”

STUART DALLAS insists Northern Ireland can only look at a potential play-off route to Euro 2020 after automatic qualification is officially out of reach. It remains a strong possibility that Michael O’neill’s men will secure a play-off via UEFA’S complex Nations League format if they fail to secure a top-two finish in Group C. Sixteen teams enter the play-offs, which are scheduled for March, with four securing a berth at next summer’s finals which will be held across 12 host cities. “It’s going to be a big ask to qualify automatically now but we haven’t really talked much about the play-offs,” said Dallas (inset). “We set out at the start of the group to give ourselves a chance to progress and we’ve played so well in our last two games and it’s really frustrating that we haven’t got anything out of them.”

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