'No need for wholesale changes' - Hallgrímsson seeking continuity after World Cup heartbreak
Head coach Heimir Hallgrimsson during a Republic of Ireland men's media conference at the FAI Headquarters in Abbotstown. Pic: Stephen McCarthy/Sportsfile
Fifa’s new rule of allowing eight substitutes will facilitate exposing fringe Ireland players to action in Tuesday’s friendly against North Macedonia but manager Heimir Hallgrímsson isn’t planning wholesale changes.
The debris from Thursday’s penalty shootout defeat in Czechia that ended World Cup ambitions was still being sifted through but staff and players were doing their best to resume normal business.
Sammie Szmodics will miss a couple of matches with Derby County on protocol grounds after being hospitalised with concussion in Prague while Jack Taylor is also out, due family commitments.
Robbie Brady (hamstring) has joined them on the absence list but Hallgrímsson will still have 22 players, including Liam Scales back from suspension.
The runout at Lansdowne Road will also be the occasion for Bosun Lawal to finally make his debut after a few false starts due to injury.
Stoke City boss Mark Robins complained about the international call-up due to the timeline on his recovery from hamstring trouble but the 22-year-old will be blooded at some stage.
"In numbers he was the furthest away from being 100%aid the manager about Lawal not making the matchday 23 against Czechia.
“We've been working in cooperation with Stoke and he is more ready now than he was in Czechia.
"We wouldn’t have been able to play him for 90 minutes against Czechia but he is much closer to that now.
“He looks really good in the training session and no setbacks in his recovery from injury.”
Ireland were four minutes away from a fourth straight competitive win until an opportunistic run by Ladislav Krejčí paid dividends with the equaliser.
“We want a solid performance, building on what we did well,” added the Ireland manager.
“There were so many positive things that we can take from that game. Everything that we expected and wanted to do, we delivered, two goals we conceded is not unfair but luck. There was one mistake from us, which we all do in life. We move on.
“We lost this one unfairly and the game fell for them. In Hungary last November that game fell for us. That's the game of margins, we need to improve little by little but I think we are going in the right direction.”
This is the first of five friendly matches before the Uefa Nations League campaign kicks off in September with a four-game window.
Two of those games will be part of a training camp in Murcia featuring a fringe squad.
“We don’t need to,” he said about overhauling his starting line-up. “The most important thing tomorrow is to have a good performance and normally the side effect of that is a win.
“Dara O’Shea previously mentioned that ‘we win and we learn’ so we never lose.
“That sentence has been stuck in my head since he said it because that’s the way we continue, grow from the last game.
“There’s a possibility to give players a chance because a lot of them have been dying to come on the pitch and show what they can do.
“We’ve been pretty consistent in our team selection so it’s an opportunity but I wouldn’t expect a lot of changes.
“I want these players to continue to perform and do well. Again just growing; all the time growing.
“We can have eight substitutions in friendlies in three slots so it’s a possibility to make changes no problem in that sense.
“But do we want it? First and foremost, we would want to do a good performance.”
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