Asked about France’s chances, Olivier Giroud decides instead to praise Irish players

*With more than 84,000 page views, this was our 10th most popular story of 2016

The Republic of Ireland gave a terrific account of themselves in Lyon.

Player for player, Martin O'Neill's side may not quite have the technical skill of the French players but, at half-time, Ireland enjoyed a deserved lead. Much of France's ability to get back into the contest stemmed from their extra rest days, seven compared to Ireland's four. Antoine Griezmann got one back on the hour mark, popping up in the box with an excellent header that gave Darren Randolph no chance. Some intuitive interplay with teammate Olivier Giroud opened up the space for Griezmann to run into just moments later and he duly finished to make it 2-1. A Shane Duffy red card made it an insurmountable task for Ireland but, after the game, Arsenal's Giroud decided to applaud the Irish players rather than discuss his predictions for how far Les Bleus could progress in the competition. "We're going to go step-by-step," Giroud said, when asked by RTÉ's Tony O'Donoghue about France's chances. "We just want to have our confidence higher and today Ireland played very well until the red card. "After that it was easier for us but they never gave up and we expected that. "I want to say that Irish fans can be proud of them and we really respected them." Giroud put France's superior second half performance down to the tactical half-time tinkering from manager Didier Deschamps who took N'Golo Kante off, put Kingsley Coman on and moved Griezmann into a more advanced role. In the 4-4-2 system, Griezmann was able to better feed off of laid-off balls from Giroud and that's ultimately what led to Ireland's downfall. "They played well in the first minutes and they scored early in the game," Giroud continued. "It was the best scenario for them and they just had to defend afterwards. "As I say, we tried to push in the first half but it was very difficult. At half-time, we really took a chance that we had to push again and again. Tactically we changed and Griezmann [moved forward] to play 4-4-2. And we created more chances to score and, after that, we were efficient." *First published on June 26