{"id":185175,"date":"2025-11-17T11:35:10","date_gmt":"2025-11-17T11:35:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/185175\/"},"modified":"2025-11-17T11:35:10","modified_gmt":"2025-11-17T11:35:10","slug":"world-cup-play-off-explainer-why-ireland-are-likely-to-be-away-for-semi-in-march","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/185175\/","title":{"rendered":"World Cup play-off explainer: Why Ireland are likely to be away for semi in March"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Ireland defender S\u00e9amus Coleman celebrates after the World Cup 2026 Group F qualifying win over Hungary at the Puskas Arena in Budapest, Hungary. Photo: Stephen McCarthy\/Sportsfile\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/1763379310_676_Sports3294542.jpg\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"100%\" data-testid=\"article-image\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_caption1 indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_secondary indo-66f0fec7_regular indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop3 indo-b48c4984_left\" style=\"color:var(--color-grey-60)\">Ireland defender S\u00e9amus Coleman celebrates after the World Cup 2026 Group F qualifying win over Hungary at the Puskas Arena in Budapest, Hungary. Photo: Stephen McCarthy\/Sportsfile<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">So, after Troy Parrott\u2019s stunning hat-trick secured a remarkable 3-2 victory away to Hungary, securing second in the group, for Ireland, it\u2019s all eyes on the play-offs in March with hopes of a first World Cup since 2002 still alive.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">Here is the lowdown on the play-off series for next summer\u2019s finals in North America.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ireland defender S\u00e9amus Coleman celebrates after the World Cup 2026 Group F qualifying win over Hungary at the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":185176,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[76],"tags":[18,17065,19,17,2723,132],"class_list":{"0":"post-185175","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-eire","9":"tag-heimir-hallgrimsson","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-sean-oconnor","13":"tag-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115564834179463841","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185175"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185175\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/185176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}