By the 30-minute mark in Athens, Caoimhín Kelleher’s performance was approaching Richard Dunne in Moscow levels.
The memory of the four saves he made in the first half is why he had already won the Irish man of the match award by the time he made the 91st-minute mistake, which is the main thing people will remember about his game tonight.
At times on this double away trip, Ireland have looked like a team on the verge of finding themselves again. The good news is there is at least one really clear area where they can immediately improve. Stop giving away goals with elementary mistakes in build-up play.
“It’s a mistake, s**t happens, we move on” Heimir Hallgrimsson said of the Nathan Collins aberration in Helsinki. But two similar mistakes in two games looks like a self-destructive habit.
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One solution would be to say: stop all this passing out from the back and go long. How easily people forget, we tried that against England and then didn’t get the ball back for three minutes at a time. By the time of the second goal, Ireland had put Greece under pressure – probably the best half-hour we have produced against them in the four-match series – by playing good football. Kelleher only found himself in that exposed position because the team were playing with maximum risk as they chased an equaliser.
The basic idea is good, but unless the execution improves Ireland will not be qualifying for anything for a while.
If any Ireland players are feeling dejected, they should look at the example of Greece. The last time Ireland played in Athens, the OPAP Arena was only half-full, the Greek public apparently uninterested in the doings of their team. Remember how Gus Poyet came to Dublin a few months later and pointedly praised the enthusiasm and official tracksuits of the Ireland fans.
The teams have been on different trajectories since last summer, a series of increasingly impressive Greek performances culminating in their remarkable win at Wembley last week, while Ireland . . . well, we know the story there. On Sunday night the Georgios Karaiskakis Arena was full. The Greeks love their national team again.
Watch them for a few minutes and you can see why. As Ireland have learned, pretty comprehensively at this point, this Greece team has some really good players.
As usual, the gifted second striker Anastasios Bakasetas was running the game but there was a lot more about Greece to admire – the energy of centre-forward Angelos Pavlidis, the enterprise of wingers Christos Tzolis and Giorgos Masouras, the bossy playmaking of the bossy little midfielder Manolis Siopsis.
Heimir Hallgrimsson made only one change from the team that started in Helsinki, Troy Parrott replacing Finn Azaz. Ireland lined up in a 4-4-2 that was designed to contain.
It would be a stretch to say it worked, in that Ireland didn’t really contain Greece at all. The home side had 12 shots in the first half.
What Ireland did produce was a fantastic display of bodies-on-the-line defending, with the back four blocking seven shots between them and Kelleher contributing those four outstanding saves.
Ireland’s spirit of resistance was summed up when Liam Scales chased back to make a magnificent tackle from behind on Pavlidis, who was preparing to pick out a teammate, as Greece charged forward on the counter. This is what it means to be horrible to play against.
For all that Greece were obviously the better side, there was something admirable in how Ireland hung in there, keeping their shape and their discipline, annoying and frustrating the Greeks by taking their time at every throw-in and set-piece. Greece of all opponents can’t complain, this is how they won the Euros in 2004.
But you have to be very lucky to keep getting away with it when the pattern of the game is this strongly against you, and Scales’s luck deserted him three minutes after half-time.
Greece came forward along the left, Bakasetas exchanged passes with Tzolis and smashed a shot goalwards from 20 yards. Scales stretched to block but the slight deflection off his outstretched leg ensured the shot would beat Kelleher. The Greek celebration in the corner was emotional, Bakasetas taking off his black armband in memory of George Baldock, the 31-year old Greek international who died last week.
Plan A (don’t concede) having failed, Hallgrimsson now had some decisions to make. The fact was that for all the positive elements of their performance, Ireland had created little to feed the front partnership of Ferguson and Parrott, the successive Great Young Hopes of Irish football, who were starting an international together for the first time.
The only chance that had fallen to either of them came in the first few minutes, when Dimitrious Giannoulis played a back-pass under pressure from Knight, inadvertently teeing it up for Ferguson. As the Irish striker shaped to shoot Lazaros Rota kneed him in the thigh. It looked a penalty but evidently there wasn’t enough in it for the Dutch VAR officials.
After that we had seen a familiar story of Ferguson struggling to get involved in the game: by the 57-minute mark, he had only 12 touches: the fewest of any player involved in the game.
Hallgrimsson replaced Ferguson with the Ipswich midfielder Jack Taylor and Chiedozie Ogbene with Festy Ebosele. The addition of the powerful-looking Taylor gave Ireland an extra man in midfield, while Ebosele keeps the ball and dribbles better than Ogbene.
What followed was Ireland’s best period of the game. Certainly Greece were drained by the physical and probably the emotional effort of their performance. Ireland were showing a different gear, and putting balls into the box. Hallgrimsson would remark after the game that the team seems to feel liberated when they go behind because the pressure is off.
It felt a pity Ferguson had left the field just as Ireland for the first time were putting balls into the box. Parrott, who had a decent game overall, doesn’t have quite the same physical presence and also maybe lacks the selfishness of a real number nine. When one ball arrived at Parrott’s feet in the penalty area, he laid it off sideways to Ebosele rather than trying his luck at goal.
Still the goal wouldn’t come, and Hallgrimsson made more and more attacking substitutions, with Kasey McAteer replacing Dara O’Shea and Ebosele moving to right-back. Eventually Ireland got so attacking that Kelleher was playing centre-back and trying to pass to McAteer through Petros Mantalos. And so Greece got the second goal their performance had probably deserved.
