“We were so unlucky not to get another goal.”
It’s hard to dress it up, that was not an easy watch. Ireland came out firing in the first 10 minutes, the fans were bouncing, and everyone was confident the Irish would get the win.
Then, Azerbaijan grew in confidence, started to get men behind the ball, and created a few chances themselves. It looked to everyone else that the game had pretty much fizzled out, until the unthinkable happened.
Right at the death of half-time, Emin Makhmudov scored a screamer from outside the box and Ireland trailed 1-0 going into the break.
However, Shane Duffy did pull back a goal and despite the boys in green having majority possession, they couldn’t find a winner, so a frustrating draw was the result.
The one half-positive from all of this was the strong performance from Adam Idah, who led the line well and looked to be our only real threat going forward.
He probably should have scored a gifted header, but by and large he made his own chances and was the only ray of hope in the game, which saw him pick up the Man of The Match award.
“It’s disappointing, we came out in the second half and played very well, top performance from everybody, we were so unlucky not to get another goal.
“I don’t think we deserve to get the draw, I think we deserved the win, it’s just very harsh and heartbreaking for all of us.
“The last game was so disappointing, everybody put in an unbelievable shift. As we all know it was against a top, top team, and they have world class players, so we take the positives from that game and bring it into this game.
“Unfortunately we couldn’t get a win, but we were unfortunate to get the draw.”
“Disappointed” was the common theme from that interview, and an accurate one to describe the last two games.
However, despite being a positive on the pitch, Idah’s claims that Ireland “deserved” to win maybe aren’t accurate.
Ireland shot themselves in the foot on countless occasions – so many over-cooked passes, missed chances, and a lack of bite when defending.
In the first half in particular, the defence just stepped off the Azerbaijan attack and invited them forward.
The result may be disappointing, but it’s no less than Ireland deserved.
