Michael O\u2019Neill said he was \u201cexcited\u201d to find out how far his young Northern Ireland team has progressed when they face Germany in Sunday\u2019s World Cup qualifier in Cologne.<\/p>\n
In the last two years Northern Ireland have won their Nations League group and recorded notable wins over Denmark, Scotland and Iceland, but a competitive match away to a German side ranked ninth in the world is a different challenge \u2013 even if the hosts are on a run of three straight defeats.<\/p>\n
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On paper this is comfortably the hardest fixture of Northern Ireland\u2019s Group A campaign, and one that will provide a litmus test for O\u2019Neill\u2019s men.<\/p>\n
Asked if his squad was ready for the challenge, O\u2019Neill smiled. \u201cWe\u2019ll find out tomorrow night, certainly.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think for this game, there\u2019s some excitement for me personally to see where my team\u2019s at in this moment in time,\u201d he added. \u201cThat\u2019s the way we have to approach it. It\u2019s a big step up.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you look at our squad we don\u2019t have many Premier League players, most of our players are sprinkled between the Championship and League One. We have some players missing who are Championship level players as well.<\/p>\n
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\u201cBut I think what we do have is real resilience in our squad and we have a real desire to do well as a nation. We have to punch above our weight and this is an opportunity for us to punch above our weight.\u201d<\/p>\n
Speaking immediately after Thursday\u2019s 3-1 win in Luxembourg saw Northern Ireland get off to a winning start, O\u2019Neill said he had told his players at the start of the week that three points would represent a \u201cgood trip\u201d and anything more a \u201cgreat trip\u201d.<\/p>\n
But even with a win already in the big, the manager rejected the idea that a match against a Germany side reeling from a 2-0 defeat to Slovakia is a \u201cfree hit\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s not a term I would use about any football match to be honest,\u201d he said. \u201cBut I think that it\u2019s an opportunity for us.<\/p>\n
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\u201cI think, given where we are as a team, playing obviously one of the superpowers of European football, one of the heavyweights, we have everything to gain from the match tomorrow night.\u201d<\/p>\n
In some sense O\u2019Neill has had his eye on this game since before the draw for this qualifying campaign was even made. Knowing Northern Ireland would be drawn against a top tier nation of some form, he took friendlies away to Spain, Sweden and Denmark to get his young players used to such challenges.<\/p>\n
The first two of those ended in 5-1 defeats in varying circumstances, while Northern Ireland ran Denmark much closer in a 2-1 loss in June.<\/p>\n
O\u2019Neill said those games had given his players valuable lessons on how to play without the ball, but he warned the level will only kick up again on Sunday.<\/p>\n
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\u201cThe difference is those were friendly games and they still lack a little bit of the edge that you have when you come to World Cup qualification,\u201d he said. \u201cThis game is right at the top in terms of the challenges we will face.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Michael O\u2019Neill said he was \u201cexcited\u201d to find out how far his young Northern Ireland team has progressed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":403194,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5011],"tags":[365,1824,31133,5508,1144,104,812,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-403193","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-northern-ireland","8":"tag-denmark","9":"tag-germany","10":"tag-michael-oneill","11":"tag-nations-league","12":"tag-northern-ireland","13":"tag-spain","14":"tag-sweden","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115158555460498334","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403193","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=403193"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403193\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/403194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=403193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=403193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=403193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}