Michael O’Neill excited by Northern Ireland’s ‘big step up’ against Germany

By Ian Parker, PA, Cologne

Michael O’Neill said he was “excited” to find out how far his young Northern Ireland team has progressed when they face Germany in Sunday’s World Cup qualifier in Cologne.

In the last two years Northern Ireland have won their Nations League group and recorded notable wins over Denmark, Scotland and Iceland, but a competitive match away to a German side ranked ninth in the world is a different challenge – even if the hosts are on a run of three straight defeats.

On paper this is comfortably the hardest fixture of Northern Ireland’s Group A campaign, and one that will provide a litmus test for O’Neill’s men.

 

Asked if his squad was ready for the challenge, O’Neill smiled. “We’ll find out tomorrow night, certainly.

“I think for this game, there’s some excitement for me personally to see where my team’s at in this moment in time,” he added. “That’s the way we have to approach it. It’s a big step up.

“If you look at our squad we don’t have many Premier League players, most of our players are sprinkled between the Championship and League One. We have some players missing who are Championship level players as well.

“But I think what we do have is real resilience in our squad and we have a real desire to do well as a nation. We have to punch above our weight and this is an opportunity for us to punch above our weight.”

Speaking immediately after Thursday’s 3-1 win in Luxembourg saw Northern Ireland get off to a winning start, O’Neill said he had told his players at the start of the week that three points would represent a “good trip” and anything more a “great trip”.

But even with a win already in the big, the manager rejected the idea that a match against a Germany side reeling from a 2-0 defeat to Slovakia is a “free hit”.

 

“That’s not a term I would use about any football match to be honest,” he said. “But I think that it’s an opportunity for us.

“I think, given where we are as a team, playing obviously one of the superpowers of European football, one of the heavyweights, we have everything to gain from the match tomorrow night.”

In some sense O’Neill has had his eye on this game since before the draw for this qualifying campaign was even made. Knowing Northern Ireland would be drawn against a top tier nation of some form, he took friendlies away to Spain, Sweden and Denmark to get his young players used to such challenges.

The first two of those ended in 5-1 defeats in varying circumstances, while Northern Ireland ran Denmark much closer in a 2-1 loss in June.

O’Neill said those games had given his players valuable lessons on how to play without the ball, but he warned the level will only kick up again on Sunday.

“The difference is those were friendly games and they still lack a little bit of the edge that you have when you come to World Cup qualification,” he said. “This game is right at the top in terms of the challenges we will face.”