Hopefully this is the extent of his scouting report.
Marc Wilmots reacted to his team drawing the Republic of Ireland in Euro 2016 with a tried and trusted cliché. Belgium will play Martin O’Neill’s side in Bordeaux on June 18th, the second game of the group which also features Sweden and Italy.
Antonio Conte, the Azzurri manager, reportedly mistakenly gave his thoughts on playing Northern Ireland, and not the Republic of Ireland, while Wilmots said he, wait for it – expects Ireland to play a ‘lot of long balls’.
“We will not have time to grow into the tournament,” Wilmots said, according to Independent.ie .
“We will have to be at our best from the first match. Italy and Sweden we know very well these teams from having played them recently. With Ireland, there are a lot of a long balls, it’s a direct game.”
Although Ireland have a reputation as a direct team, to say O’Neill’s side, which features talented, technical footballers such as Wes Hoolahan, James McCarthy and Robbie Brady, are a team who only play long balls is a bit unfair.
There’s also a difference between a ‘long ball’ and a long pass. Ireland played a lot of long, largely aimless, long balls under Giovanni Trapattoni, whereas, under O’Neill, they’re arguably better termed as direct passes to Jon Walters, who has the skill and nous to then bring players like Hoolahan into the game.
Hopefully Wilmots underestimates Ireland next summer, and he already has his eye on the semi-finals, despite the difficult group draw.
“It’s a fairly tough group. The most annoying thing is that we’re playing Italy in the first game. It’s always difficult to recover if you lose your first game. But the Italians will not be happy to have been drawn against us either.”
“We are the favourites, along with Italy, to advance to the next round. We want to go as far as possible. The semi-finals would be great and then we will see where we can go from there.”
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