Ireland Urged To Beware Of Belgium Backlash

After Italy’s dismantling of the tournament favorites earlier this week, Hazard will need to maintain focus and optimism to ensure Belgium gets the necessary results in the remainder of the group stage.

But his header from Kevin de Bruyne’s cross flashed just over Gianluigi Buffon’s crossbar.

With Italy having thoroughly neutralised the threat of Belgian forward Romelu Lukaku in their opener, Sweden and their leading striker will have to improve significantly to trouble Italy’s solid defence.

“They’ve got some fantastic players, but there’s nothing to fear, we can’t have any fear going into these games”, he said.

“There would have to be a huge improvement for him to come through – if the game was on tomorrow he wouldn’t make it”.

Lukaku said the loss would bring Marc Wilmots’ team back down to earth. Hazard has some groin and knee issues, while De Bruyne has a thigh problem. But if you ask me if I was playing with anybody leave be it Nottingham Forest, Rockmount, Cobh Rambers and they were constantly talking about wanting to leave and they had a poor attitude to training, then I would kick them in training. “So let me be cautious”.

Towards the end of his press conference, Roy Keane asserted that the pressure of being expected to deliver in a major tournament was preferable to the easier life sitting in a television studio. Time after time, the Italian players easily ran past Belgium defenders in the first match.

He said with a smile: “I never touched him, he dived. James at this minute, the way he trains for us, he is probably unlucky not to be in the starting line-up, so he would certainly come into our consideration, but there would be a few others too”.

The Belgians could take some lessons from Ireland on that front after the team’s performance against Sweden.

Ciaran Clark talks about that unlucky own goal and the lads discuss how he might be handling it ahead of Saturday’s massive challenge.

The “we” was Wilmots, the Belgium manager, and his players.

“Even though they were beaten, it’s still going to be a really tough game – but hopefully they’re thinking the same looking at us”. If they can produce similar quality against Belgium it will be a great building block for us.