Tactics nearly pay maximum dividends - September 2, 2000 Holland 2 Ireland 2 Ireland came within ten minutes of a famous win over the Dutch in their World Cup qualifier at the Amsterdam Arena on Saturday night and in turn put behind them many bad displays away from Lansdowne Road over the last couple of years. Manager Mick McCarthy decided to take the game to the Dutch, starting the game with a 4-4-2 formation instead of his favoured 4-5-1 away formation. It nearly paid dividends straight away when the Irish won a free kick on the right hand side of the Dutch defence. Up stepped Leeds United's dead ball specialist Ian Harte and, as every Irish man held his breath, Harte curled a great shot towards the top right-hand corner but the ball didn't dip quick enough and went agonisingly inches over the bar with Van der Saar beaten all ends up. Minutes later Niall Quinn should have opened the scoring when he got on the end of a brilliant centre from Kevin Kilbane but his header hit the post with the goal at his mercy. Ireland were making most of the running and took a deserved lead in the 21st minute. Jason McAteer and Stephen Carr made ground down the right. McAteer played the ball into the corner for Carr and with sheer persistence the Tottenham full-back got the ball back to McAteer on the edge of the box. The Blackburn midfielder hit a great cross into the box which was curling away from the goal and Inter Milan's Robbie Keane timed his jump to perfection to head the ball past Van der Saar. It was no more than the Irish deserved as they were the better team in all aspects of the game. A weakened Holland looked all at sea at times and were lucky to reach half time with only a one-goal deficit. With the Irish crowd in full voice the Irish went looking for a second goal after the break and it finally came in the 65th minute through Jason McAteer. Stephen Carr picked out big Niall Quinn and the Sunderland striker knocked it on to Robbie Keane. At this time McAteer made a diagonal run and when Keane got the ball to the Blackburn midfielder's feet he hit a curling left-foot shot from 22-yards which flew past Van der Saar. Ireland looked home and dry but nothing is ever that clear-cut in international football. Holland finally got into game and when substitute Jeffrey Talan halved the deficit in the 71st minute with a far post header the Irish were left with a nervous wait for the final whistle. Kevin Kilbane could have made the score 3-1 when he burst into the Dutch box but he decided to shoot low and to his horror Van der Saar went down early and got a block. He admitted later that if he had held onto the ball for a second longer he would have definitely scored with any sort of chip. Irish hearts were broken in the 84th minute when Giovanni van Bronckhorst hit a shot from another planet which took a horrible deflection off Mark Kinsella to beat Alan Kelly. The goal was a fluke if there was ever one but that's football. The Irish players can be rightly proud of the display they produced as can manager Mick McCarthy - and not forgetting the 10,000 Irish fans inside the stadium, as they sung their hearts out.
Holland: Van de Sar, Reiziger (Seedorf, 46), Konterman (Talan, 66), F. de Boer, Van Bronckhurst, Bosvelt, R. de Boer, Cocu, Witschge (Bruggink, 60), Bouma, Kluivert. |