O’Neill ‘reveals’ emotional post-match exchange with Keane

Kante in the middle has had a sensational season, Pogba is a very good player and I assume that they will have the vast majority of the tickets so it will be a tough afternoon but we are ready for it.

France booked their place in the knockout stages on Sunday night and will have half a week longer to recover than Ireland.

O’Neill – who is from Northern Ireland – was a popular manager during spells with Leicester and Aston Villa in the English Premier League and with Celtic in Scotland. We have chose to forget about (it) and that’s some doing coming from Ireland.

Clearly exhausted after what he said had been a late night – the squad returned to Versailles immediately after the game – and then early start, O’Neill said that having given the players a day off to spend some time with his family, the real work on preparing for Sunday’s game will start tomorrow.

“There are similarities between that and now facing France on Sunday”.

He said: “We were delighted to win the game and be part of that evening and it was genuinely special”.

“We have to think that because the performance last night will give us an enormous boost of confidence and we need to carry that through”.

Ward picked up an ankle injury early in the famous win over Italy on Wednesday night, but he managed to complete the full 90 minutes.

France finished their Group A fixtures on Sunday, giving them an extra three days’ rest, although the Ireland manager is not too concerned by that.

“It does seem a disproportionate amount of time that one team has to recover from another”, O’Neill said.

Questioned about the 44-year-old former Manchester United and Ireland skipper’s response, O’Neill added: “He said, “You are an ugly sod”, and I agreed wholeheartedly”.

O’Neill’s men did not get to bed until about 5.30am on Thursday after travelling back to their base in Versailles outside Paris, and having played on a Lille pitch UEFA admitted had suffered “irreversible damage”.

“The first thing to say is that France have individual talent that is mesmerising, some very good players”. If the competition was in Ireland, I would do exactly the same myself. We followed that up with a couple of other great European nights against [teams such as] Liverpool, the atmosphere was incredible.