Newly crowned Republic of Ireland centurion, James McClean, believes that Ireland can pull off a 'big' win when they play the Netherlands next September.
Ireland's chances of reaching Euro 2024 were dealt a major blow this week after the Boys in Green were beaten 2-1 by Greece in Athens on Saturday. The defeat has given Ireland a mountain to climb in terms of qualification. Despite the 3-0 win over Gibraltar, Greece is three points ahead of Ireland with a game in hand, and Stephen Kenny's side has to deal with the Dutch and the French in September.
Ireland will play France on September 7 in France, and three days later they will welcome Ronald Koeman's Holland to Dublin on September 10. After this, on October 13, Ireland will play Greece.
McClean believes that Ireland can get a result because of previous impressive displays against the bigger sides. Ireland were narrowly beaten by Portugal, France, Serbia, and others in past fixtures, but the lack of effort has never evaded Ireland in the games. The Ireland winger is counting on Ireland's gutsy streak to help them when the sides meet in September.
"I've seen plenty of them, I don't want to create headlines and be disrespectful," said McClean to the media, when asked about Holland.
What a servant to Irish football đźđȘđ
James McClean leads out the Boys in Green on his 100th appearance. pic.twitter.com/Of3COuXbdGâ SportsJOE (@SportsJOEdotie) June 19, 2023
"They seem to have a lot of very good individual players, but maybe as a team they're not where they want to be, and hopefully we can exploit that. I actually think we perform better in the big games, as you've seen here against France. We'll see, that's all I can say.
"I don't think that's something that can ever be questioned, the togetherness in the Irish team - from the day that I came into the setup, there's always great camaraderie, it's a special atmosphere within the camp."
Although McClean feels Ireland have a fighting chance, he isn't unaware of how hard the task at hand will be. Beating Gibraltar was just the start claims McClean.
"We've still got to play Greece (at home), we've got to play Holland twice so there's still a lot of football ahead. We've picked up wins before when people haven't given us a chance and we're going to have to do that again.
"We're not naive, we're not stupid. It's a big task ahead. What I said to the lads was we have to start somewhere if we want to achieve something special. So it was just about getting that win and then, who knows?"
