Heimir Hallgrimsson on ‘six minutes of madness’ and ‘embarrasing’ 5-0 loss to England

Macdara Ferris reports from Wembley

There is an honesty about Heimir Hallgrimsson. He didn’t oversell the 1-0 win against Finland last week and he didn’t hide his disappointment with what he called an “embarrasing” 5-0 defeat to England at Wembley.

While he started his post-match press conference saying he was “kind of lost for words” he soon gathered his thoughts to reflect on what was Ireland’s worst Wembley result eclipsing the 5-1 loss when the sides first played in the North London venue back in 1957.

“(It was) six minutes of madness,” said Hallgrimsson. “It was a shock conceding a penalty, conceding a goal and losing a player. We probably lost our heads at this moment leading into a second goal, then our third goal. We lost our heads, gave up.”

Asked to reflect on saying his team gave up after those six early second half minutes when they found themselves three goals down and a man down after Liam Scales’ sending off he said: “We lost what we were doing in the first half.

"(It is) maybe too harsh to say we gave up. We had a gameplan that was working perfectly but all of a sudden in six minutes there’s no way out.”

That game plan, which admittedly had been effective in the first half, saw Nathan Collins deployed in a more advanced role in front of the Ireland back four looking to deny England space in between Ireland’s lines. 

“That set up and tactics against a good team like England fits the profile of our players and how a team like England play with players dropping into that space like Harry Kane. They didn’t play in the first half through our block. They had to go outside our block.

"After the first half we had the game we wanted it to be, we were defending compact and they didn’t find ways to play through us.”

Ireland had a big shout for a penalty with Evan Ferguson harshly treated by Marc Guehi taking a handful of his jersey bringing him down in the box and harshly treated by referee Erik Lambrechts and his Belgian VAR officials who didn’t award a spot kick.

“I thought it was a penalty for sure. It would have changed the momentum of the game but again I don’t want to make excuses. 

“Excuses when you lose 5-0 is kind of pathetic, to be excusing or talking about positives. It is embarrassing to lose 5-0."

There is a play-off to come in March to retain Ireland’s perennial place in League B and after that a World Cup campaign where the Boys in Green will be drawn from the third rank of teams. 

“We need to play teams like England that have better players than us. First half gave us an idea how we can play against teams like this. If you can play like this for 50 minutes, let's hope next game we can do it for longer.

"And with a little luck, if we got a penalty and scored a goal, it is a totally different game. It is a psychological advantage to us until the scenario we had today. There are a lot of negatives but it is important to me to look at the positives and build from that.” 

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