Friday, September 02, 2005
Qualifier Countdown - 5 days away
Yesterday, I highlighted some comments coming from the French camp on the big game between Ireland and France in five days time at Lansdowne Road. Therefore, today I will highlight some comments from the Irish camp.Ireland manager Brian Kerr has sent a message to French counterpart Raymond Domenech declaring:
"Everyone knows what it's going to take for us to beat them here the traditional qualities of Irish teams and not the sort of stuff that Domenech was having a go at us about a few weeks ago in an interview basically slagging us, having a laugh over the way we played in some of the matches and stuff like that.
"It's not going to be like that it's going to be us using all the qualities that we have of discipline, desire, passion and good football. It'll be about many of the things we did in Paris but we're going to have to do them even better as they have an even better team now."
Kerr has been quick to praise the French players however, particularly Zidane who he described as "the outstanding world player of the last few years". Even so, Kerr remains confident:
"We have got to feel confident in our ability to get results in games, irrespective of who the opposition is. We have approached the games well and had a real go; our philosophy is to attack home and away. We've had spells in games when we haven't played as well as we would have liked but in general we've been in reasonable control of games, apart from a spell in the away game in Switzerland.
"Now we've got two homes and an away one to go. We need to continue that, we need to continue playing with that desire, verve and confidence. I've got a feeling that we're capable of that over the last three games."
It will me an unmissable match without a doubt. As for the other games in Group 4 tomorrow, they can be watched live on Setanta Sports. Switzerland face Israel in Basel and coverage of that match begins at 4.10pm, while France take on the Faroe Islands in Lens with coverage of that encounter beginning at 7.45pm.
With a bit of luck, Switzerland and France will slip up against Israel and the Faroe Islands respectively.
# posted by United Irelander @ 5:03 PM 
© 2008 United Irelander.
