{"id":552049,"date":"2025-11-06T03:25:15","date_gmt":"2025-11-06T03:25:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/552049\/"},"modified":"2025-11-06T03:25:15","modified_gmt":"2025-11-06T03:25:15","slug":"northern-ireland-sunderlands-trai-hume-and-daniel-ballard-will-only-get-better-says-michael-oneill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/552049\/","title":{"rendered":"Northern Ireland: Sunderland&#8217;s Trai Hume and Daniel Ballard will only get better, says Michael O&#8217;Neill"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Trai Hume and Daniel Ballard have played a big role in Sunderland\u2019s early-season success\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/9a895b60-38d0-4763-8758-5e359c334402.jpg\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"100%\" data-testid=\"article-image\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"beltel-ebe0ecc6_root beltel-ebe0ecc6_caption1 beltel-300db776_none beltel-91174671_secondary beltel-66f0fec7_regular beltel-1d70522a_marginbottom0 beltel-1d70522a_marginleft0 beltel-1d70522a_marginright0 beltel-1d70522a_margintop3 beltel-b48c4984_left\" style=\"color:var(--color-grey-60)\">Trai Hume and Daniel Ballard have played a big role in Sunderland\u2019s early-season success<\/p>\n<p class=\"beltel-ebe0ecc6_root beltel-ebe0ecc6_paragraph beltel-300db776_none beltel-91174671_primary beltel-1d70522a_marginbottom0 beltel-1d70522a_margintop0 beltel-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">Michael O\u2019Neill says he\u2019s thrilled to see Daniel Ballard and Trai Hume playing the best football of their careers, but he expects Sunderland\u2019s dynamic duo to become even better players in the coming years.<\/p>\n<p class=\"beltel-ebe0ecc6_root beltel-ebe0ecc6_paragraph beltel-300db776_none beltel-91174671_primary beltel-1d70522a_marginbottom0 beltel-1d70522a_margintop0 beltel-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">Ballard (26) and 23-year-old Hume have made a smooth transition to the Premier League after reaching the elite stage this year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Trai Hume and Daniel Ballard have played a big role in Sunderland\u2019s early-season success Michael O\u2019Neill says he\u2019s&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":552050,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5011],"tags":[8544,1144,8538,2958,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-552049","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-northern-ireland","8":"tag-graham-luney","9":"tag-northern-ireland","10":"tag-northern-ireland-football-team","11":"tag-sunderland","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115500621884631788","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552049","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=552049"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552049\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/552050"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=552049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=552049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=552049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}