Gary Breen
๐ค SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
That's fine.
The game kicks off, Joe, and I'm thinking, okay, you know, I can understand, like, the hurt of the players still trying to get rid of that type of pain.
And we saw a perfect example of it when Seamus berated them, didn't he?
I'm not sure what minute it was, quite early on when they weren't showing for a throw-in and he was literally expletively saying, come on, liven up, lads, we're walking.
Now, they were shot.
But the thing that really stuck to me was on about seven minutes, seven minutes 30, Seamus went bursting forwards.
And he kind of, the ball broke to him and then he kind of bounced into central midfield.
He was five or six yards away then, but doing a counter press, going after their midfielder who hadn't secured the ball, he's bouncing in around him.
He literally turned his back on him and sprinted back into a back five.
And when he did that, he had seven men behind the ball already in place.
And yet he didn't.
He went against all his natural instincts when you think of how good he is at harassing people.
He didn't go that six yards to put the pressure on.
And I'm thinking, this isn't his decision.
This is by instruction.
So I'm thinking, OK, so we're still going to play that way, are we?
A low block five, narrow midfield four, one up front against North Macedonia, who conceded 11 goals in two games.
And then 10 minutes into the game then, so three minutes after that, we put a high press on their goalkeeper playing out from the back, the goal kick.
We've got five people there.
He looks up, he clips a ball to his inside left forward who brings it down.