The Northern Ireland manager Michael O'Neill sounded motivated and confident as he led his squad into the Riviera stadium in Nice this afternoon. "We need to embrace the whole situation, not fear it," O'Neill said even as he identified Poland's Robert Lewandowski as "one of the two best centre-forwards in the world".
Luis Suarez is the only other out-and-out striker in Lewandowski’s bracket, O’Neill thinks, but the Bayern Munich forward’s presence in Poland’s team could not dampen the palpable sense of belief exuded by O’Neill and captain Steven Davis as they prepared to train at the stadium.
“We’ll train here and this will be our final session,” O’Neill said.
“The players are very well prepared, I don’t think there’s a need for a final message. I think they understand the significance of the game.
“The preparation we have done has been flawless. I don’t think I’ve ever felt a team has been as well-prepared in the four years that I’ve been in charge.
“In terms of what we’ve managed to do with the squad, the work week after week, how the players have taken that on board - and we have no doubts whatsoever about Kyle’s [Lafferty]fitness. In terms of where we are as a squad I don’t think we could be in better shape.”
Lafferty trained with the squad, while the injured Chris Brunt, who is missing the tournament, jogged around the pitch. From the outside, O'Neill has decisions to make on personnel, but he is sure in his own mind.
O’Neill mentioned Poland’s 33 goals in qualification - and that 15 of them came against Gibraltar - and he saluted Lewandowski.
“Ask any club in the world if they would take Lewandowski, I think that they would,” O’Neill said.
“There’s other threats. We know there’s Milik, Grosicky, Blaszczykowski on the right, Krychowiak. We know the Polish team very well.
“Lewandowski is the talisman, the same as Ibrahimovic in the Swedish team with a big personality and being captain. We have done a lot of work on the Polish team as a whole.”
But the Irish focus is also on themselves. Tomorrow is 30 years to the day since Northern Ireland last played in a tournament and captain Davis said: “The spirits are very high, the mood’s relaxed, we’ve got good characters.
“The excitement’s building and there’ll be a few nerves before the game, but that’ll be down to excitement about the stage we’re playing on. I can’t wait to get started.”
