Shock away win for Luxembourg in Dublin

Luxembourg won their first competitive away match in 13 years by defeating Republic of Ireland 1-0.

The result leaves Ireland struggling in their World Cup 2022 campaign having also lost their opening match last Wednesday to Serbia 3-2.

Ireland were already looking far from confident against the 98^th FIFA-ranked team when they fielded their fourth-choice ‘keeper Gavin Bazunu, who was making his international debut just after turning 19 last month. The decision was made to start with the on-loan Rochdale keeper following injuries to Darren Randolph and Caoimhin Kelleher and after Mark Travers had a tough international debut last week letting in three goals in Belgrade.

In the first half Ireland had a lot of the ball and their best chance came when Matt Doherty drifted inside and fed Callum Robinson out wide, who whipped a perfect cross across the six-yard box for James Collins, who saw his effort hit off Luxembourg goalkeeper Anthony Moris who knew nothing about it.

Ireland created almost nothing else in the game with no rhythm to their play and the pace at times in the game was pedestrian like. The Irish players were perhaps suffering from the lack of crowd to help lift their performance but were no doubt benefitting from not having 50,000 home fans booing their unimaginative play.

Luxembourg players seemed to sense blood and with five minutes to go everything collapsed for Ireland. Gerson Rodrigues picked up the ball from the right hand side, turned away from a few challenges, drifted inside and riffled the ball low and hard into the bottom right hand corner of the Irish net. Rodrigues had been busy all through the game looking sharp and ready to take his chance. The Luxembourg bench came running down the touchline to celebrate with him. Even with five minutes to go plus four minutes of extra time you knew it was over for the Irish.

Luxembourg wanted it more and that says a lot about where things are with Irish football at the moment. Stephen Kenny has no wins and only three goals after ten games. Irish fans dreams of a first World Cup since 2002 are shattered with their captain Seamus Coleman stating “The players have to take a long hard look at themselves and should be embarrassed with that performance.”

Up next for Ireland, after taking that long hard look at themselves, is a friendly in Hungary to Qatar on Tuesday night – perhaps the closest the Irish will get to experiencing the World Cup next year in the Middle East.

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