{"id":618125,"date":"2025-12-07T15:02:25","date_gmt":"2025-12-07T15:02:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/618125\/"},"modified":"2025-12-07T15:02:25","modified_gmt":"2025-12-07T15:02:25","slug":"world-cup-draw-northern-irelands-michael-oneill-on-chance-to-make-memories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/618125\/","title":{"rendered":"World Cup draw: Northern Ireland&#8217;s Michael O&#8217;Neill on chance to make memories"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Diego Maradona in action for Argentina at the 1982 World Cup\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Maradona.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)\">Diego Maradona in action for Argentina at the 1982 World Cup<\/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)\">It was 1978 when the World Cup first cast its spell over Michael O\u2019Neill. A primary school boy then, he was soon swept along by all the colour and chaos, the tension and theatre of football\u2019s grandest stage.<\/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)\">That was the summer Mario Kempes danced his way into folklore, Argentina\u2019s talisman slicing through Dutch resistance, as the air turned thick with blue-and-white ticker tape which fell like celebratory confetti as the trophy was raised to the sky.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Diego Maradona in action for Argentina at the 1982 World Cup It was 1978 when the World Cup&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":618126,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5011],"tags":[1999,1144,8538,16,15,1514],"class_list":{"0":"post-618125","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-northern-ireland","8":"tag-adrian-rutherford","9":"tag-northern-ireland","10":"tag-northern-ireland-football-team","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom","13":"tag-world-cup"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115678894923817803","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/618125","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=618125"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/618125\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/618126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=618125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=618125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=618125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}