Michael O’Neill fumes as Slovakia sink Northern Ireland campaign with late goal

Northern Ireland manager Michael O’Neill cut a frustrated figure. Pic: Ben Whitley/PA

Michael O’Neill fumed at a goal that “should clearly have been disallowed” after Northern Ireland’s hopes of progressing from World Cup qualifying Group A were ended by Slovakia debutant Tomas Bobcek in a 1-0 stoppage-time defeat in Kosice.

Bobcek, who had only been on the pitch for three minutes, prodded in after Bailey Peacock-Farrell failed to deal with a corner, but Northern Ireland were enraged that a foul was not given as Daniel Ballard had gone down under pressure from Leo Sauer.

That was in the first minute of eight added on, and there was further misery for a shorthanded Northern Ireland as Ballard was shown a soft second yellow card to earn a red while O’Neill was himself booked by referee Istvan Kovacs after the final whistle.

Slovakia had already seen second-half strikes from Lukas Haraslin and David Strelec chalked off for offside and handball respectively.

Northern Ireland ended the night assured of a qualifying play-off place via the Nations League after Croatia beat the Faroe Islands 3-1, but frustration was the primary emotion.

“You’re always disappointed when you lose a game late as we did, especially to a goal that should clearly have been disallowed,” O’Neill said. “There’s a clear push on Daniel Ballard at the corner, two hands on his back.

“The other two goals that were disallowed should have been disallowed. The first goal was offside, the lines clearly show that, the second goal was handball.

“You have to look at each incident on its merit, you can’t look at it cumulatively and referee the last incident differently from how you’ve refereed the other two. That’s what (VAR) is there for…

“Bailey will know he should have done better. He comes when maybe he doesn’t need to come… but ultimately it’s still a foul.”

Asked what he said to the referee after the match, O’Neill added: “I said to the referee that he needed to be stronger and he booked me. But I went to shake his hand. I said, ‘you need to be stronger’ and that was enough for him to book me. If I’m not allowed to say that, then I shouldn’t have said that.”

O’Neill was also unhappy with the Slovakian bench, which emptied in wild celebrations after the winning goal, with home coach Francesco Calzona refusing a handshake at the final whistle.

In a tense, scrappy game in which the best opportunities for both teams all came from set-pieces, Northern Ireland – missing Shea Charles, Ali McCann and Ethan Galbraith in midfield – battled hard but struggled to find any fluidity.

“There were aspects of the performance that could have been better,” O’Neill said. “There’s no doubt about that. I felt the lads that came in, Brad Lyons did extremely well, George Saville did extremely well, Ruairi (McConville) was excellent, just a young player coming into that type of game.

“We were missing maybe five starters from our team and that’s a lot for us to carry. The game was decided by set-pieces and Slovakia were better at set-pieces than we were. Our delivery wasn’t as good and we missed Shea in terms of his delivery.”