Martin O’Neill says he and his Republic of Ireland players are ready for the opening game of the European championship qualifying campaign against Georgia in Tbilisi tomorrow evening where all 23 players are expected to be fit for selection.
The Ireland manager said at his pre-match press conference that he knows his starting XI but would not reveal it as he not yet told the players. Robbie Keane was sitting alongside him but O’Neill would not even confirm that the Dubliner will start or captain the side.
The event was a slightly odd affair with the manager coming across as slightly tetchy through its early stages but then utterly dismissing the suggestion that he seemed tense. He then went out of his way to address a local journalist who asked if he felt Russia should lose the 2018 world Cup but who had been told that the question would not be answered as “football and politics shouldn’t mix”.
Unfortunately O’Neill appeared to have misunderstood the question and talked instead about the qualifying game in 2008 which was moved to Mainz because of Georgia’s conflict with the Russians over the border region of South Ossetia.
The slightly offbeat air of the whole thing was somehow added to by the Georgian translator’s thick Scottish accent but when it was put to O’Neill that his opposite number, Temuri Ketsbaia, had suggested that his team is capable of playing the better football, the Irishman provided a serious summation of the situation as he sees it on the eve of the campaign’s kick-off.
“When the draw was made Germany were the outstanding team in the group, they are now the world champions and therefore you would have to say that they will probably, when all is said and done, they will probably win the group.
“There is no doubt that we, Georgia, Poland and Scotland will fight from the start here tomorrow all the way through the competition, right to the end to qualify. That’s what we’ll be trying to do and there will be four teams in it. We have to assume that with little history behind them, Gibraltar will have difficulty in qualifying. With the four teams, it will be very tight. What he (Ketsbaia) thinks about his players does not bother us.
“We’d love to get off to a great start. We’re ready for the game and going into it full of confidence. We’re not nervous today (a reference to an earlier question), we might be nervous tomorrow but we’re ready for the game. It’s as simple as that.”
Assistant manager Roy Keane, meanwhile, suggested the players are confident and determined. “It’s certainly a good opportunity for us,” he said. “If you look at the past, the way we’ve qualified has always been through the play-offs. Of course we’d like that to change and finish first but second place is certainly up for grabs but we’re going into this campaign confident that we can qualify for the Euros. If you don’t believe that then we certainly won’t do it.”
