The Northern Ireland boss is fully expecting to face a fired up German team following their shock 2-0 loss in Slovakia on Thursday in Group A, but O\u2019Neill suggested that the history of his country tells you stunning results can be achieved.<\/p>\n
That happened in Euro \u201984 qualifying when Northern Ireland beat West Germany 1-0 at home and away thanks to goals from Ian Stewart and Norman Whiteside, while the World Cup encounter in Cologne will take place exactly 20 years on from a famous 1-0 victory in Belfast against a star studded England side when David Healy was on target.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was a really strong England team. We didn\u2019t on the night expect the result to go our way,\u201d said O\u2019Neill at his media briefing.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were at home, which was a different situation obviously, but Northern Ireland have come here in the past and won against Germany. It was back in 1983. I remember Norman Whiteside scoring, so it is not impossible to come here and win. That\u2019s the belief we will give to the players.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you have positive results like that over the years when you are a tiny nation like us, history tells us that we can at times produce results that people may not expect, and that\u2019s what we have to believe on Sunday night.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Germans and coach Julien Nagelsmann have faced criticism at home in the last few days and are under severe pressure after the defeat in Slovakia, which followed other losses in Nations League matches versus Portugal and France.<\/p>\n
Asked if Northern Ireland can take advantage of that, O\u2019Neill said: \u201cI would imagine the German national team always plays with pressure because the expectation is so high, and these players are used to dealing with that. The coach has coached at a very high level so he would be used to dealing with that as well.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think sometimes when you play for your national team criticism can be a little more personal than when you play for your club, so that brings added pressure because everyone wants to do well for their national team and their families.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you have players who play across Europe and come back and play for the national team, they want to give a good performance and good account of themselves.<\/p>\n
\u201cI haven\u2019t read any of it but the criticism Germany had, if they need extra motivation they will get it from that.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Northern Ireland boss admitted that Slovakia\u2019s victory over Germany wasn\u2019t what he wanted.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can\u2019t control what happens. I have said to the players what we believe we need to finish in the top two positions in the group,\u201d said O\u2019Neill.<\/p>\n
\u201cProbably Slovakia winning that game is a result we would have preferred not to have happened but we have to congratulate them on the fact they won that game. We are not really looking at the group.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have to take every double-header as it comes. You are almost in a play-off situation with teams. This is the hardest place in the group that we will come and play, so if we can take points in a fixture of this nature it will be a great start for us.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Northern Ireland boss is fully expecting to face a fired up German team following their shock 2-0…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":402846,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5310],"tags":[2000,299,1824,31133,8538,30649,1514],"class_list":{"0":"post-402845","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-germany","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-germany","11":"tag-michael-oneill","12":"tag-northern-ireland-football-team","13":"tag-steven-beacom","14":"tag-world-cup"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115157812177796358","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402845","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=402845"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402845\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/402846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=402845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=402845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=402845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}