Michael O’Neill and his Northern Ireland squad are aiming for another night to remember with their performance against world champions Germany in Paris tomorrow night.
The 2-0 win over Ukraine, which guaranteed them third place in Group C, has captivated the country.
Football fever has swept both sides of the community, young and old, male and female, and O’Neill hopes their heroics in France can inspire the next generation of footballers to great things.
The players have seen the wild celebrations from the fan zone in Belfast and O’Neill said they are keen to repay that support, especially as they stuck by the team in many lean years before their recent success.
“When you see the pictures from back home, you see the enjoyment. You see the reaction in the stadium at the game. That’s why we’re here. We just want it to continue,” he said at the official pre-match press conference.
“It’s a simple thing: keep believing in the team. They have never stopped believing. They will turn up in their thousands in the fan zone in Belfast to watch the game tomorrow night.
“Hopefully we can give them another night to remember. If we progress to the last 16 then it’s going to be another momentous game.
“The support has been phenomenal and we just want to repay that. The most important thing is that when you are a small nation you should enjoy this whole experience.
“The focus is football. Everyone is united, which is great. Everyone is talking about football and we hope that we can stay in the tournament as long as possible so that mood prevails.”
Northern Ireland may still need another point to make sure of qualification for the knockout stages, but the pressure of that and facing the world champions has not fazed O’Neill.
Instead, he believes this is a moment to savour and one that players can tell their grandchildren in years to come. It would be all the sweeter for O’Neill and his players if they can get a positive result tomorrow night.
He said: “This is a special moment. When we qualified in October if you had offered us the chance to play against the world champions in Paris and that a victory could mean that we could possibly win the group then we would have happily taken that.
“We will work off the basis that this is an opportunity for us to first of all enjoy it and saviour it. When we look back on our careers it will hopefully be something that sticks in the memory for a long time. To make that even more memorable we have to try and get a result and get to the next phase of the tournament.”
“Hopefully we can give them another night to remember. If we progress to the last 16 then it’s going to be another momentous game"
The Republic of Ireland took four points off Germany in qualification and O’Neill said he spoke briefly to his counterpart Martin O’Neill about those games.
The Republic of Ireland manager joked that they should just get as many men behind the ball as possible.
He said: “Every coach and every team do their analysis of the opposition. So we have watched how Ireland got success against Germany in qualification, we watched Poland against them in qualification. I have seen them against Italy.
“You have to form your own game plan on the players that you have, rather than the players that someone else has. We know what to expect from the German game. We watched very closely their opening two games as well and it’s as stiff a test as we can get.”
There are not too many observers who give them much hope of getting the point they need, but then there weren’t too many saying they could beat Ukraine and they went on to secure a fully deserved victory on a rainy night in Lyon.
Germany may have a fearsome reputation as a super-efficient clinical team with a conveyor belt of talent, but O’Neill feels they are not as strong as they were when they won the 2014 World Cup in Brazil.
He has spent hours watching and analysing their games and believes he has spotted some chinks in their armour, not that he was giving that much away to reporters.
He said: “They are a very strong team. I watched how they played against Poland and how they were able to pin Poland back, but we also saw the fact that Poland had arguably the two best chances in the game. We are aware of that.
“We are aware of recent games where we believe there are weaknesses in the German team. I’m not going to sit here and state them, but we believe that we can hurt Germany.
“We have proven in the past that we are a good counter-attacking team and that’s what we have to be if we are to create opportunities from the level of possession that we anticipate having. No team is flawless. I think Germany have proven that they have flaws as well.
“There has been a little bit of change in their squad from two years ago, so there are opportunities there for us to exploit. Ukraine, for example, had chances in the opening game.
“It’s up to us that with whatever possession we have in the game that we maximise that to create opportunities because I believe that we will get opportunities in the game.”
