Ireland get Armenian gift but value of victory compromised by events elsewhere
Ireland's Evan Ferguson scores his side's first goal of the match. Pic: Piaras Ó Mídheach/Sportsfile
A night that could have been, looked for a long time like being, the end for the Republic of Ireland’s World Cup hopes and dreams ultimately delivered an overdue World Cup qualifying win and news of unwanted late drama in Lisbon.
No one was filing into the cold October night feeling giddy on the back of this 1-0 defeat of Armenia in Dublin.
All the more so when news of Dominic Szoboszlai’s late equalizer for Hungary away to Portugal filtered through.
That goal, enough for a 2-2 draw against the Group F leaders, will likely leave Ireland needing some sort of result against the Nations League champions when Ronaldo and Co. come to Lansdowne Road next month.
That and a win in Budapest after it. The credit unions might be quiet this summer.
Defeat away to Armenia last month had shunted this Irish team firmly behind the black ball in Group F and yet they followed up a battling display in defeat to Portugal on Saturday with a first-half display here that snookered everyone.
Heimir Hallgrimsson said this week that he would take a “shitty” game and a 1-0 win. That was fine – he got exactly that for the most part – but Ireland played for 45 minutes like this was an instruction rather than a baseline aspiration.
“As a collective, we know we owe you, the supporters, and the country a good performance tonight,” he wrote in the programme. “We have a responsibility to restore the pride, dignity, and honour that this jersey deserves after what happened in Yerevan.”
Armenia boss Yeghishe Melikyan had warned that his team were ready to go to "war" in a game that was vital to their own hopes of making North America in 2026.
He couldn’t have imagined that it would be so quiet for so long on this western front.
If the entire Irish team stood up to be counted at the home of Sporting CP last Saturday then there was safety in numbers in the back-to-the-wall nature of it.
This was always going to be different. This needed an individual bravery of a very different stripe.
A spark rather than endless buckets of sand.
Not the throw-yourself-at-a-shot courage that saw Portugal awarded a disgraceful penalty at the weekend, but the ability to play on the front foot, through the lines, to make something happen when something absolutely, positively had to happen.
But were they capable of it?
If Ireland wanted to create, then they would have to leave the trenches, stick their heads over the parapet.
Space, in that event, would inevitably be left behind against a team that was given acres of it when beating them 2-1 in Yerevan last month.
That had to be a very real worry for an Irish side that had kept just two clean sheets in their last 16 games. And an Irish team looking to win a World Cup qualifier on home soil for the first time since 2017. Four managers ago, basically.
Hallgrimsson clearly shared those concerns. The Ireland manager, without the two central midfielders he started the campaign with due to injury and suspension, named six defenders and a back five. At home. To Armenia. In a must-win qualifier.
It was a safety-first approach even as the trapdoor lay wide open beneath them and, while the players have been complicit in what has been another trying campaign, Hallgrimsson has to be first man in for questioning for setting out his stall so conservatively.
Not just in terms of formation but attitude too.
What followed was torpor and pure torture. No zip in attack, no pressing off the ball. Nothing for the Lansdowne Road crowd to get its teeth into after an opening few minutes of fleeting encouragement.
Festy Ebosele ploughing a lone furrow will only take a team so far.
Temple Bar stag parties have had more challenging nights out in Dublin than an Armenian team that, by the break, had played some pretty patterns and almost scored off a lightning counter-attack seven minutes from time that Ireland couldn’t even conceive.
And then came the first gift.
Tigran Barseghyan went and delivered a baby headbutt at Finn Azaz and then saw red again, this time in the form of a card. Ireland finally had a fuse and it was lit when Nathan Collins and Dara O’Shea had headers turned away brilliantly by the goalkeeper.
Henri Agavyan denied Ferguson five minutes later and, while he made other, better stops from Adam Idah and Ireland spurned other open chances, he could do nothing about Ferguson’s header for the only goal on 70 minutes.
Armenia, as Ireland have done too often in recent times, switched off for a split second and they paid mightily for it.
A second gift for the hosts but one whose value was soon compromised by events a few thousand miles away.
It may be that this was a night that gave us an early taste of what is to come next summer when Ireland are at home and the main event is happening elsewhere.
A win, then, but its value isn’t yet certain.
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