Heimir Hallgrímsson hopes Ireland’s comeback win over Finland in Helsinki on Thursday night can prove to be the injection of confidence the squad needs to finally put a string of disappointing results behind them.
Robbie Brady’s late winner earned Hallgrímsson his first victory as Ireland manager, in what was his third fixture at the helm. Ireland trailed 1-0 at half-time in Helsinki before second-half goals from Liam Scales and Brady turned the contest in favour of the visitors.
“It was not a perfect match, they got at least two chances in the second half and we could have been punished again but it’s always good to have a win,” said Hallgrímsson afterwards.
“We talked about confidence and I think this game will definitely help us in that area.
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“We can be happy with a lot of things today in the performance. I thought one mistake in the first half and we were punished. I thought we played pretty good, especially at the end of the first half and we kind of built on that in the second half.
“Everybody felt we were doing better and better in training, we were more in sync, and I think it showed on the pitch today, we didn’t give them a lot of goalscoring chances, it was not like they played through us.
“I think overall we should be happy with the performance but it is a difficult game in two days, there will be some tired legs, so we need to start thinking about Greece.”
Festy Ebosele made a huge difference when introduced in the latter stages and he caused Finland massive problems with his surging runs down the right.
Ebosele used all of his trickery and power to cut open the home defence and dink a lovely cross over to Brady at the back post for the winner. Brady showed lovely control and composure to slam the ball home, and the Dubliner said taking on the shot was his only plan when he controlled the ball.
“I think I heard some of them to maybe try a cross but as soon as I saw it I said I’d hit it and lucky enough it went in,” smiled Brady.
“Festy showed a bit of magic when he came on, I thought he was excellent with his pace and power, and it was a great delivery.
“You can see the hard work the lads are putting in every camp and the results were not going our way but we could sense something was coming. There is millions of pound worth of young talent in that dressingroom and we’re just delighted to get the win tonight.”
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