IRELAND need to go back to a four-man defence if they want to shock Portugal and turn the momentum in their World Cup qualifying campaign on its head. It is my analysis that because Ireland produced a brave display to go down to a narrow, late defeat by Portugal in Lisbon last month, the Irish team management (and most pundits) would believe that a similar approach is the correct course of action to use when the sides meet in Dublin this Thursday. 

AS international rivalries go, Ireland-Bulgaria goes back more than 100 years and there is probably as much fanfare around their meeting this week as there was when they first met at the Paris Olympics in 1924. In May last year, the FAI opted to recognise that encounter at Olympique Yves-du-Manoir a century ago as the first official fixture of the Irish Free State.

Chiedozie Ogbene's goal against Greece which was ruled offside (UEFA.com) FIFA’s decision to expand the World Cup finals tournament to 48 teams means there will be as many European teams (16) in the North American event two years from now as there were in the entire tournament when it was held in Mexico in 1970. 54 UEFA nations have just learned what the path to Canada, Mexico and USA 2026 will look like – or at least most of them did, as the quarter-finalists in the UEFA Nations League are all in a situation whereby they will go into one group or another depending on whether they win their last eight tie.