Ireland 2-3 Uruguay

March 29th, 2011 | by: Schwallacus | Comments Off

Just have the highlights since I was unable to catch the game, I will have a summary up tomorrow or Thursday.

Just a few points from what I saw in the highlight video above:

♣Shane Long looked great on both the goals that we scored.  On the first one he brought the ball down, muscled someone off and laid it off to a teammate, got up from the ground and scored on the immediate cross.  I really, really like where Long is going, and it he can keep this up then I would rather see him on the pitch than Doyle, who seemed to be in a funk.  That was before he got injured though, so Long may be playing a lot more when it counts now anyway.

♣ Fahey stepped up well and put the penalty kick in the back of the net, which is nice to know when we have our fringe players, they too can step up just in case we need them.

♣ Our defense looked shaky on two of the goals, and a little bit of luck for Uruguay on their first goal.  The first one was scored off a freekick, on a ball that was supposed to be headed away instead being headed into a Uruguay player, bounced to a teammate and booted in.  the other two goals however, we looked a little flat footed.  The first one we got grouped up into the middle of the pitch right at the top of the 18 box, and all the player had to do was find a player on the outside, pass it to him, and score.  No one was close to the outside winger, which left him open and thus able to take a nice shot and dump it in the corner.  The other one was a break in which our left back decided to head in and allow a run behind him, leaving the goal scorer with acres of space, allowing him to take a shot and score.

♣ Like I said before, I didn’t see the whole match, so our defense could have been good, possibly terrible throughout the whole game.  Maybe Long just showed up for the two goals that we scored, and had a bad day elsewhere.  Maybe he had an awesome day though and was rewarded by setting up and finishing one of the goals.  I don’t know… yet.  Hope you guys have an awesome day though, and I will be back soon with a whole game recap/ thoughts and such.

sláinte!