Girls in Green gaffer Eileen Gleeson picked out moments can ...
IRELAND manager Eileen Gleeson bemoaned the small moments she believed were the differences between glory and defeat against France.
The Girls in Green lost 1-0 to Les Bleues in Metz to kick off the Euro 2025 campaign as Marie-Antoinette Katoto scored after just six minutes.
But while France dominated the game and had 21 attempts on goal to Ireland’s one, Gleeson’s side held firm to give themselves a chance.
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And Gleeson was pleased with a lot of her side’s performance but bemoaned how Katoto could score off a set-piece.
She said: “It was back post and second ball, these are the areas we talk about, it didn’t get organised quickly enough. The second ball didn’t get picked up.
“We conceded that early which is annoying and disappointing for us and the girls.
“But we still had to go another 90 minutes and we felt the girls put in a great shift and came away with a loss. But we’re not overly displeased with the performance.
“In the second-half we went a little bit toe-to-toe with them and put them under pressure. A good performance to work off.
“I felt a bit more belief from us up in the attacking third, getting good bodies in there and we potentially could have snatched a draw out of that one at the end.”
And she pointed to a moment late in the game when Leanne Kiernan put a ball across goal when a different ball could have fed in Katie McCabe for an equaliser.
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She said: “These are the decisions. Potentially, yeah she plays Katie in there and we’re 1-1.
“We’ll be reviewing that but in these moments, we can be shouting as much as we want from the sidelines. She doesn’t pick it out and we don’t come away with a result.”
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Ireland now go on to face England - who drew 1-1 with Sweden in their campaign opener - at the Aviva Stadium on Tuesday.
And Gleeson stressed that her team must go again then.
He said: “One result won’t define the whole campaign and we can’t look at it like that, that we had to have a performance that we could work off and build on for Tuesday.
“We know it was a 1-1 draw in the other game in the group and I think that’s going to be a picture across the group where teams will take points off each other, so we can’t be detrimental about one result here.
“We have to build on the performance. We knew it was going to be tough and it was tough, but I feel like the girls gave a good performance.”
Gleeson also expressed her sympathy to assistant Colin Healy, whose wife Kelly sadly passed away on Thursday.
Healy has not been with the squad this week though the matter was not mentioned publicly to respect his and his family’s privacy.
Gleeson said: “We are all sad and we send our deepest condolences and our love and support to Colin.
“It’s Colin’s private time with his family and we will be respectful of that. We are obviously thinking about him and his family.”
