Michael O’Neill believes Northern Ireland’s successful Nations League campaign has shown his young team is moving in the right direction ahead of next year’s World Cup qualifying campaign.
There were mixed emotions in the immediate aftermath of Monday’s 2-2 draw in Luxembourg – the point saw Northern Ireland earn promotion out of League C as Group 3 winners, but there was disappointment in how they let slip a two-goal lead in the space of three second-half minutes.
Over the past year Northern Ireland have lost a whole host of players – including Steven Davis, Stuart Dallas and Jonny Evans – to retirement.
Only last month Northern Ireland set a new post-war record by fielding a side with an average of 22.6 for the 5-0 win over Bulgaria, but in Luxembourg that bar was lowered again to just 22.2.
As O’Neill reflected on the campaign as a whole, one that saw Northern Ireland win three, draw two and lose one of their six games against Luxembourg, Belarus and Bulgaria, the manager has seen much to give him confidence for the bigger challenges to come in 2025.
“If you look at the team (in Luxembourg), we had two 19-year-olds playing and I would imagine the average age was close to 22,” O’Neill said.
“There’s a lot of lads out there who are going to play a lot of international football and they’re doing extremely well in international football at this moment in time.
“There’s a huge amount for us to be positive about when we look back at this group, and the number of young players who have become very important players in our squad.
“I think the biggest thing is the style of play of the team, the patience and the build-up, and then the speed of the team in the attacking areas…I think we’re starting to look like a team that has a real identity, a style of play and we’ve just got to continue to improve on that and build on that.”
On the balance of play Northern Ireland arguably deserved the win in Luxembourg, having looked in control for 70 minutes of the match. Conor Bradley’s header early in the second half added to Isaac Price’s first-half strike.
But things unravelled quickly as Seid Korac poked in from Daniel Sinani’s free-kick in the 72nd minute before Gerson Rodrigues’ stunning strike from the edge of the box – which came after Northern Ireland only half-cleared a ball into the box – levelled the match three minutes later.
“I didn’t think there were danger signs but when you’re 2-0 down in the game you don’t have anything to lose,” O’Neill said. “I thought the game came forward maybe a bit more direct in that stage of the game, the game got stretched a little bit.
“In many ways that played into our hands because it allowed us to counter. Their first goal comes from a free-kick in the middle area which we maybe should defend better. The ball travels a long way before there’s contact.
“Then the second one we just drop a bit deep, the header only gets to the edge of the box and Rodrigues is capable of that. It was a great strike and we have to accept that.”
