Nov 24,2024
Heimir Hallgrimsson will put his feet up over Christmas and revisit the notes he's been jotting down since September.
It has, by his own admission, been a tough week. A 5-0 hammering at Wembley extinguished any spark of optimism the 1-0 home win against Finland had kindled.
In the immediate aftermath, Hallgrimsson didn't hold back in his assessment of a disastrous second half: "Lost our heads. Gave up."
He was in a more upbeat mood after yesterday's Nations League play-off draw pitted Ireland against Bulgaria, though he still referenced a "mental breakdown" that allowed England to run riot.
The Icelander has touched on the brittle confidence of the players a few times. Two weeks ago he said he'd like to bring in a sports psychologist to address what looks like a deep-rooted, collective insecurity.
"We had a good talk prior to the England camp, just who has access to things like these, in this area, and, yeah, I myself have used help in this area and it's really just one piece of the puzzle, that you can add to what we are doing," Hallgrimmsson further expanded as he looked ahead to 2025.
"A professional in this area, not even a professional, just someone you can share things and stuff with because psychology is just a bigger and bigger part of elite sports. In elite sport, it’s a bigger and bigger part of coaching."
"We lost a player, and we conceded a goal. A kind of mental breakdown, moments of madness."
And what of his own mind state in the wake of the English hammering?
"It's tough," Hallgrimmson admitted. "All coaches would say the same, losing with this number has been tough. And criticism, you cannot answer that in any way. You need to take it in. Because when you lose 5-0 you’ve definitely done something wrong.
"We’re not hiding. The goals we conceded were very soft and strange but I think again it was down to the mentality and psychology, we lost our heads. We lost a player, and we conceded a goal. A kind of mental breakdown, moments of madness, conceded three goals in six minutes and it’s game over. It’s tough to come from back that. It happened very quickly."
Ireland will be third seeds when the World Cup qualification draw is made on Friday 13 December. Unlucky for some, but maybe not for the Boys in Green. They are very likely to be in a four-team group given their play-off against Bulgaria is in March, when the five-team groups are scheduled to begin their qualifiers on the road to Canada, Mexico and the USA.
That would mean Ireland's World Cup campaign would not get going until September. They would therefore be liberated them from having to play during the notoriously awkward June window.
"The good thing is that we are in a four-team group. That is more or less 100%," Hallgrimsson said.
"Then we can use June for final preparation, more relaxed. We've talked about the June window for us. The teams that we can face especially from Pot 2 are not teams that are much better than us, even though they are higher ranked. It gives me hope than we can do things.
"No matter who we face we will be ready when it comes to the World Cup, that we can get results for sure."
Before all that there's a date in Bulgaria to negotiate. Northern Ireland beat the Bulgarians 5-0 in Belfast back in October but previously came unstuck in Plovdiv, where they lost 1-0. Boss Michael O'Neill lamented afterwards: "That's as poor a pitch as we've had in a long time."
Ireland will have to deal with that in the spring; albeit Bulgaria have since addressed the bobbly surface at Stadion Hristo Botev.
"We just met them after the draw and it's confirmed that it's Plovdiv, they were re-laying the grass before the last game, that's why they played the last game in Sofia," said Hallgrimsson.
"It's a better stadium, a newer stadium so they want to play there. Because it's the first game, I think it's a little bit tricky. Do we do Monday/Tuesday in Dublin and then fly, and do Wednesday, MD-1 training session there in the stadium? Then it's coming back home. Again the tricky thing is, do we fly straight after the match or stay a day down there?
"It's now logistics work for the federation. I think they are going next week for a site visit, just to check the hotel and locations so we can prepare in advance. (It's a) really good professional set-up here, I like it."
