‘You can’t click in 10 days and become like Germany’

Noel King believes Ireland should work on adopting a more modern, European style of football but any progress in that direction, he suggests, will take time on the training pitch as well as patience in the stands.

“We’ve changed the system, we put an emphasis more on the passing game,” the interim manager said on the morning after his team comfortably saw off Kazakhstan in Ireland’s final World Cup qualifying game.

But King also conceded the performance was not wholly convincing. “You have to accept flaws,” he said. “If you want to change something, you need to make sure that the skill set gets better. There were times, the players will tell you, we gave the ball away too easily.