Belgium coach Marc Wilmots has rounded on his critics after seeing his team blast their way into Euro 2016 form with a resounding victory over the Republic of Ireland.
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“He then kicked the ball out. It’s like a boxer when he gets knocked out; you get back up and start swinging, and hope for the best”.
Ireland were demoralised and Belgium picked them off on the counter to make it three with 70 minutes played. “You have to have lads who can put their foot on the ball, show a bit of composure, a bit of courage, want the ball”.
“From a player’s point of view, if you smell danger and you think, “We’re in trouble here”, then yeah, you do whatever you can to get the right result”. You might get a yellow card – you might even get a red – but your team might win.
“You know what he brings to the team”, Larsson told reporters. Does that answer your question?
“But there are two ways of looking at it now”.
“Footballers make mistakes – every footballer”, he added.
“I think we played really well and were patient in our approach”.
“When you’re attacking, you’re at your most vulnerable, so we’ll have to work on that”.
“It’s how you deal with the setbacks, that’s what sets you apart from the others”.
Gianluigi Buffon and Antonio Candreva both trained separately once again today, so are not expected to feature on Wednesday.
His final words as he left the main press conference at Ireland’s media base were that Ireland needed “players with courage”. It’s just manipulating the people, giving the people the wrong ideas. Very rarely, I appreciate that, but they do. Of course it’s an advantage for us, but we have to use him in the right way and get him involved in the game in a positive way.
“These boys will be fine”. Only a win will be enough to see them advance from Group E.
However, if Ireland are to prosper as they did in New Jersey 22 years ago, they will have to take greater care of the ball than they did against Belgium at the weekend, when they surrendered possession all too readily. “That’s why it’s so important to look after the ball. We’re training here tomorrow morning and hopefully he can get involved somewhere [.] but it’s still very much touch and go”. “We didn’t give them anything in the first half”.
“That can come sometimes just from lack of concentration”. Of the 13 players they used on the day, Belgium had one man in his 30s; Ireland used 14 players, six of them in the 30-plus bracket.
“We were punished against Belgium and I actually quite enjoy that in sport”.
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“I don’t think that can be my attitude going into the game and it shouldn’t be the players’ either”, said O’Neill.
