Republic of Ireland head coach Heimir Hallgrímsson was asked “what went wrong?” against England immediately after the 2-0 defeat at the Aviva Stadium on Saturday night.
“Seven minutes,” he replied, mysteriously, before condensing the difference between the sides to “confidence in decision-making and initiative”.
The meaning of the “seven minutes” remark cannot be clarified until after the second Nations League tie against Greece on Tuesday as John O’Shea, once again, will fill the traditional manager role of dealing with the media before the match.
Hallgrímsson even suggested he will need the next international camp in October to bring him fully up to speed with the Irish players, having framed his working relationship with O’Shea as similar to the co-manager arrangement that he enjoyed at Iceland alongside Lars Lagerback for five years between 2011 and 2016.
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Hallgrímsson also suggested that O’Shea could replace him at the helm of Ireland following the 2026 World Cup qualification campaign.
As for the loss to England, he said: “We can talk about the individual quality [of England] but when you are defending in a collective way, you need to make decisions, you need to take action.”
Ireland stuck to a back five defensive system, also used during O’Shea’s four friendlies as caretaker manager this year, despite England interim coach Lee Carsley exposing the use of three centre halves by playing Jack Grealish through the middle.
“What formation you play, for me, is irrelevant,” said Hallgrímsson. “It’s about fitting the players you have and about the opponents you play.”
So why not switch to a back four at half-time? “We talked about it, do we want to change formation, we had in mind what we could do but we decided to try to improve rather than just jump from one thing to another.
“Maybe that would have hurt us more, I don’t know, but we did better in the second half, we showed a bit more initiative and were braver and came a bit higher up the pitch.”
In the same breath, Hallgrímsson conceded that England managed the last 45 minutes, clearly protecting their 2-0 advantage.
“When we play five at the back, again talking about initiative, sometimes you have three centre backs against one striker,” he continued. “You need one to step up. Once they play better together, they grow in confidence to take the initiative to say ‘I’ll step into midfield’.”
This makes sense from the Icelander’s perspective but Ireland have been operating a back five since Stephen Kenny, with Anthony Barry as coach, went with Matt Doherty, John Egan, Shane Duffy, Dara O’Shea and Séamus Coleman against Portugal in 2021.
“I think it was maybe because of a lack of confidence,” he said of the Irish team’s defensive problems on Saturday, “we were more passive than active when we were defending.”
Greece beat Finland 3-0 on Saturday night in Athens.
“Everybody probably expects England to win the group, so it is between us and Greece and Finland to be second.
“It’s open and that is why this game is massively important. Having them now at home, the players will know Greece, it’s more or less the same squad as played in the Euros. So hopefully we can change what happened in the Euros, both here and away.”
At some moments on Saturday, Hallgrímsson appeared as the manager, but sometimes it was O’Shea – the “assistant head coach” – on the line and both bosses appeared to defer to Crystal Palace coach Paddy McCarthy when it came to imparting instructions to the players.
“We are all in it together,” said Hallgrímsson. “But I need a lot of help in the first one or two camps, not knowing the characters of the players.”
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