The way Iād look at it is this. There was a World Cup semi-final a year or two back where one team was 5-0 down after half an hour. They ended up conceding seven. And they were at home. And they had 11 men, not 10. And they werenāt denied two stonewall penalties when the game was level.
The way football and especially playing against England is now is itās like playing Dublin at their peak. You could be level with 20 minutes left, playing a great game, and still lose by 23, like Wexford in a Leinster football final a few years ago.
The white ones are all Bolsonaro supporting evangelical nutcases and mediocre centre backs deemed not good enough to have a nickname, or if they do have a ānicknameā itās something crap like Fred or John or Bernard or Paul. There are no Garrinchas in Gort.
Coach Heimir is on the right road. Heās instilling the basic principles.
This is a bit like eye surgery. Some people go blind in an eye and expect the surgery to make everything perfect within an hour when the reality is recovery takes years. Of course there is also the possibility, nay the likelihood, that you do everything right and give it the time needed, and the outcome is still absolutely shite.
My distrust of white Brazilians was formed by their 1990 World Cup centre back pairing of Ricardo Gomes and Ricardo Rocha. All the talk before that World Cup was that Brazil were āsmarterā this time, that they had abandoned the traditional Brazilian Brazilianness in favour of a āEuropeanā style and thus their victory was inevitable. There was also thinly veiled racism at play there because the Brazil team of 1990 was very white overall.
Anyway the white central defensive partnership was shite and one of them ended up getting sent off against Argentina and Brazil lost.
They brought in two black lads to play centre-back in 1994 and won the World Cup.
This is it. Sure 30 years ago Kilkenny had DJ Carey & theyād beat Laois by around 2-14 to 1-13. Then in the space of around 15 years the whole sporting stratosphere changed utterly & professionalism, even in those complete bogger activities, brought the elite off out into their own. Iām tired of saying it but there are levels now. Thereās a growing chasm between the haves & have nots. You wonāt bridge it playing soft, tippy tappy stuff away from home but youāll have a chance if youāre concentrated, dogged, disciplined & snarling. And we were for 45 minutes last night but then we lost a couple of those things - maybe two in one fell swoop for the misplaced pass & red card. The chain kinda broke & the English didnāt need a second invitation to advance with their chariots. Allied with a ref who was trying to impress his favourite England players, it was pretty sickening but we need to take it on the chin. As Heimir said, we still should have been more resolute to double down & even see out a 2-0 reversal or whatever. But these are the learnings & that first 45 minutes was a template to build on. As @Juhniallio said too, that Conor Gallagher rabona was the equivalent of a soft cunt kicking a lad in the head while heās already unconscious. Where were you when it was a fair fight, you cunt? You store this anger & use it the next time. We are improving.
Conor Gallagher is the football equivalent of the simpletons whose entire understanding of the world is framed through āI canāt wait for the meltdowns after Donald Trump wins/Conor McGregor has been acquitted/Israel has completed its extermination of the Palestinians/the world ends. Itāll be fucking hilarious.ā
Heās got a face youād never tire of slapping.
I canāt wait until the Butcher of Bilbao or somewhere smashes his ankle to bits. Thatāll be hilarious.
Conor Gallagher travels on an Irish passport. If Simon Harris made an election promise to rescind Gallagherās passport I would votĆ”il Fine Gael.
We had the Yeomen in right trouble with direct balls a few times. You could also see the confidence in terms of actual passing movements which was a bit reminiscent of the time Ireland started to play a bit of actual football under Martin OāNeill in late 2015 having gained confidence after two years of deeply unattractive but effective first principles football.
There was one passing movement out of defence after about 35 minutes which was superior to any ātippy tappyā stuff played in the entirety of Bossman Steoās tenure. Thatās confidence.
All that said, I didnāt actually watch any of the game itself so am probably badly positioned to comment.