Tomorrow i’ll be up in Croke Park again to watch Ireland take on Cyprus in a world cup qualifier. So far, under new manager Trappatoni, we’ve done ok, beating Georgia and drawing with Montenegro. Both away from home.
At home, we’ll be expected to pick up victories against those two + Cyprus and Bulgaria. Italy are the big guns in the group. Not surprising really as they’re world champions 🙄
Cyprus are a banana skin team for us, so victory tomorrow is crucial… doesn’t really matter how we get it. At best, most people expect us to finish second behind Italy and i’d tip that’s exactly where we’ll finish.
The big dates to look out for are October 10th 2009 and 1st April 2009. Home & Away to Italy, the World Cup holders. We’ll probably need to get a result in one of those matches to finish 2nd in the group. A ‘result’ means not losing or ideally winning 🙂
But if we win the bread and butter games against the likes of Cyprus tomorrow, we can go in to those games against Italy full of confidence and possibly putting the Italians under pressure.