Northern Ireland happy to be taking place at top table

Martin O’Neill is far from the first manager to leave a major championship draw clinging for consolation to the idea that it could have been worse but his Northern Irish opposite number must have been struggling to believe then that after seeing his side drawn with Germany, Poland and Ukraine on Saturday evening.

“I could have been more satisfied if I’m honest,” he responded to a Polish journalist whose tone as he asked his question suggested, strangely enough, that the former Shamrock Rovers manager might have a fat cigar waiting for him somewhere. “But I felt that our qualification group with Romania, Hungary, Finland and Greece was not an easy group either. I thought that was a difficult group but we won it and we’ll come here with a belief that we can be competitive and certainly that we can achieve something at the tournament.”

Individual stars

The schedule certainly offers O’Neill and his players some big stages to show what they can do but the prospect of going into their last group game needing to get something against the Germans is clearly daunting. Before that, they will face Polish and Ukrainian sides that contain some standout individual stars and that’s something that O’Neill is hoping might just work in his own team’s favour.

“What you do find is that a lot of these countries have huge players,” he says, “so it’s very important that those players turn up. Our success has been built on the spirit and the togetherness of our team, we’ve proven that.

“Kyle (Lafferty) had a massive campaign for us,” he continued, citing the example of the Norwich City striker who scored seven goals in qualifying appearances, “but in the biggest game, game nine, (at home to Greece) he wasn’t available and we won the game. Hopefully all the big stars who come here will have nights off when they play against us, that would certainly help us in terms of how we can do in the tournament.

“But I think the fact that the first game is in Nice will suit us. Poland will go there with a lot more expectation than we will have so I think it will possibly be a more difficult game for Poland than it will be for us.”

It’s possible that by the time the Irish play Germany, the top seeds will already be through to the next round, something that might prompt then to relax a little against O’Neill’s men but the 46-year-old suggests: “I’m not sure that it’s going to work just as easily as that.

“People thought that Germany were going to qualify easily from their group in qualifying but that wasn’t the case: they dropped points to Ireland, they dropped points to Poland so it’s never quite as straightforward as that.

“I think that it will be magnificent to play Germany, the current world champions, in the Parc des Princes, it will be a magnificent occasion but I hope that when we do we have something to play for. To do that we obviously have to make sure that we take points against Poland and take points against Ukraine.”

In terms of history between the teams, the Irish have found it difficult against the Germans although they famously did the double over them during qualifying for Euro 84, their only competitive wins in nine encounters.

When they last came up against Ukraine, during qualifying for Euro 2004, both games ended scoreless while they took four points from their two World Cup qualifying games against Poland in 2009. Much has changed since then, however, and O’Neill, for now, is just happy to enjoy getting to be present at the game’s top table.

"Most of Northern Ireland only get to watch these tournaments on TV," he says, "so it's great to be here with some fantastic coaches like Vicente del Bosque, Joachim Löw; coaches who are at the very top of world football. I think the tournament will be something special and I'm just delighted that we're getting to be part of it."