Sport360 rounds-up the best of the post-match quotes from the French capital. The big striker managed to get his body in a position to somehow flick a poor cross that landed behind him towards the Ireland goal.
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Speaking about his goal, he said: “It was a fantastic set up by Seamus, it’s just come to me and I caught it on the half-volley and I was delighted to see it go in the back of the net”.
Ireland worked tirelessly to try and take three points from their easiest-looking Group E fixture and deny Ibrahimovic the chance to make his mark on the tournament, but a tenacious first-half performance gave way to a exhausted final quarter and Sweden capitalised. In the first half we were excellent and at the start of the second half as well. But the boys should be proud.
“It’s just a little bit tight now”.
“I’ll get an overview of that game”.
“Spurred on by a magical crowd, I thought there were some great performances there”.
“We should have been at least in front by half-time”.
“But we were as positive as we could be, all our substitutions were positive to try to get the goal, so the players are disappointed, but certainly not downbeat”.
“The way it happened of course, that’s the disappointment. That’s probably the reason we are sitting here with one point instead of three”. We will need to play at 300 percent to get through. “That’s how they created the chances they did in the first half”. Successor Martin O’Neill may not be quite so rigid in his approach, but the freedom with which his players performed in their opening fixture came as a breath of fresh air and it appears they are going nowhere without a fight. “Our attack was simply not good enough and really bad in the first half”.
Hoolahan, ably supported by the similarly impressive Brady and Jeff Hendrick, helped Ireland into the ascendancy for the much of the first half at the Stade de France – his deft touches and razor-sharp awareness helping to elevate a match that often favoured brawn over brains.
O’Neill’s side suddenly stopped doing everything that had got them into a winning position, and allowed Ibrahimovic – as well as Martin Olsson and Emil Forsberg – to get into more risky positions. There is no problem with our attitude though.
Ibrahimović and Cristiano Ronaldo have each registered six goals in the course of the last three EUROs and are within three strikes of Michel Platini’s finals record of nine – all of them scored at the 1984 edition in France.
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Wes Hoolahan called it the goal of his life and on every level, it was flawless – down to the detail of his family being on the right side of the Stade de France, which allowed him to celebrate in front of them.
