World Cup fate still in our own hands, insists Cunningham

KENNY CUNNINGHAM has insisted that Ireland’s World Cup fate still rests in their own hands as they aim to put the weekend’s frustrations behind them in the Faroe Islands.

With 12 points left on offer, Ireland can still finish the group with a total of 22 points.

With France and Switzerland to visit Lansdowne Road in the autumn, they can reach that figure by putting serious dents in their rivals’ own hopes in the process.

But the loss of two home points on Saturday has further narrowed the margin for error.

“We’ve got to pull ourselves together,” said Cunningham. “Our future is still very much in our hands with the French and the Swiss still to come here but the next important one is Wednesday. That’s a big game for us now and it’s very important that we take the three points.”

As Damien Duff said afterwards, the nature of the game left Ireland feeling like they’d actually lost to Israel, leaving Brian Kerr’s management team with the job of lifting morale before the game in Torshavn.

Roy Keane was quick to nip any feelings of self-pity in the bud when he addressed the players in the dressing room immediately after the game on Saturday and they’ll need to be focused to account for the Faroes, who gave France a tough time at home last September before going down 2-0.

“We’ll be okay by the time Wednesday comes. There’s a lot of lads still disappointed but it’s such a tight group and I don’t think a huge amount has changed,” said the Birmingham centre-half. “If we can go and win on Wednesday that’ll make the summer holidays an awful lot better. It’s still very much in our hands. There is still a belief and a confidence that we can qualify from this group.”

Fine, but the fact remains that Ireland have now let leads slip three times in this qualifying group, twice to Israel and once in Basel. Paris may have been a much lauded display, but there too Ireland failed to claim dibs on the three points.

When asked why Ireland have lacked that killer instinct, Cunningham hesitated for a few moments before ignoring the bigger picture and taking Saturday’s game as a case study instead.

“That’s difficult to pin-point. We were so confident at 2-0. Maybe it was a little bit of lethargy, maybe a lapse in concentration. We probably overplayed it in the wrong areas of the pitch in the last 20 minutes. I thought they got a little bit more adventurous.

“They pushed one or two people higher up the pitch. We gave away one or two sloppy little passes in the wrong areas and invited on a little bit of pressure, which we didn’t need to do. That culminated in the goals that they got, maybe fortuitously,” he said.

Just like AC Milan claimed that they were the masters of Liverpool for all but six minutes in Istanbul, Ireland have peddled the line that they too were the better team for all but the half dozen minutes it took Israel to score their two goals.

What that hides is the fact that, soon after Ireland’s second goal, the home team visibly eased off the pace enough to invite the Israelis back into the game. By the time Avi Yehiel’s header looped over Shay Given’s hand and into the net, Ireland had managed only one shot on target in 27 minutes.

“I felt we just took our foot of the accelerator,” Cunningham admitted.

“They got a bit more adventurous and pushed a few people higher up the pitch. They didn’t allow us to play it out so easily. We gave the ball away cheaply in one or two areas of the pitch and that’s how quickly the game can turn.

“There’s no disguising that it’s two points dropped and that we were very confident that we could win that game. They created one good chance in the 90 minutes and they’ve taken it, with a penalty on top.”