Northern Ireland defenders Daniel Ballard and Brodie Spencer have been ruled out of the forthcoming World Cup qualifiers away to Luxembourg and Germany.<\/b><\/p>\n
Sunderland’s Ballard was forced off in the first half of his side’s 2-0 loss against Burnley on Saturday, while Spencer was injured in Oxford United’s 6-0 Carabao Cup defeat against Brighton on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
It is a further blow for boss Michael O’Neill, who is already without goalkeepers Pierce Charles and Conor Hazard as well as defender Ciaron Brown and midfielder Jordan Thompson through injury.<\/p>\n
O’Neill has called up uncapped trio Kofi Balmer, Ryan Johnson and Jamie McDonnell as replacements and further cover.<\/p>\n
Motherwell defender Balmer, 24, has made 20 appearances for Northern Ireland’s Under-21 side and been called up to the senior squad on six occasions without making an appearance.<\/p>\n
Johnson, a 28-year-old centre-back at League One AFC Wimbledon, receives his first senior call after featuring for Northern Ireland at under-21 level.<\/p>\n
Midfielder McDonnell is currently on loan at League One side Mansfield Town from Premier League side Nottingham Forest, who took the 21-year-old from Irish Premiership side Glentoran in 2020.<\/p>\n
He has represented his country at under-17 and under-21 level.<\/p>\n
Northern Ireland begin their World Cup qualifying campaign in Luxembourg on Thursday, 4 September.<\/p>\n
They travel to Cologne to take on Germany in their second Group A game on Sunday, 7 September.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Northern Ireland defenders Daniel Ballard and Brodie Spencer have been ruled out of the forthcoming World Cup qualifiers…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":383416,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5011],"tags":[1144,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-383586","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-northern-ireland","8":"tag-northern-ireland","9":"tag-uk","10":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115114468030903295","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383586","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=383586"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383586\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/383416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=383586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=383586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=383586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}