Robbie Brady’s 82nd minute strike was cancelled out by Edin Dzeko’s sharp finish three minutes later to share the spoils in the fog-covered Bilina Polje stadium. Less clear is how to approach the task.
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The Boys in Green have suffered Euro play-off heartbreak before, having lost to Holland in 1996 and Turkey in 2000, but in front of what should be an electric atmosphere at the Dublin 4 venue, Ireland will think they are more than capable of getting the job done. “I think he’s just been sensational”, O’Neill said. That has to be the mindset.
“If we camp in our own penalty area it’s a recipe for disaster. We have done it the hard way, but we have got there”. Ireland are unbeaten at Dublin’s Aviva Stadium since the summer of 2014, an eight-match run that has included five clean sheets.
It has proved an eventful campaign for Ireland, whose hopes of qualification were dealt early blows by defeat in Scotland and a home draw with Poland. The players will go on to the field with that knowledge and it would be no surprise if they took a cautious approach to pushing men forward. However positive the dressing-room message, the longer the game goes on without score the deeper Ireland can be expected to sit.
O’Neill has a slightly bigger squad to play with ahead of this evening’s leg with Jon Walters returning from suspension, while Shane Long and John O’Shea took full part in training yesterday but remain significant fitness doubts. Long has been recovering from an ankle injury, while O’Shea is shaking off a hamstring strain.
However, if the 34-year-old cannot be risked, O’Neill can draw sustenance from the impressive display in Zenica by centre-halves Richard Keogh and Ciaran Clark.
Ireland too will have fresh faces available, and one of them, Jonathan Walters, will be familiar to Begovic following their time together at Stoke.
He very almost left with both, although that would have been harsh on Bosnia, who dominated for long periods in a game which only really exploded into life at the end.
“I’d a very foggy view of our goal”, he added, “I haven’t seen it back since but I think he did very well to come back in (and shoot)”.
The other problem position for O’Neill is left-back.
Ireland defended well as a unit on the night, but couldn’t hold out to the final whistle, with substitute Ognjen Vranjes delivering a fine assist to Roma hitman Dzeko, who scored his 45th global goal. We tried to answer the Irish players with the correct mind of an aggressive game and we did our best. Brady has also played there for O’Neill but is not naturally a defender.
“Listen, I don’t want to be writing them off because I know for a fact they’ll be believing they can get in that starting XI in France”. I don’t think that Bosnia necessarily target players in that sense.
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“These games are the best games I’ve ever experienced and to qualify would be a dream of ours and an opportunity that we can’t let slide”.
