It was the last minute of the first half and it didn’t look like there was much on when Mikey Johnston received the ball on the left and advanced on Nikolai Alho. But then Johnston started throwing some jinks. First he veered left then he cut right, paused, and went left again.
It looked like he had delayed too long, taken it too wide, made the crossing angle too difficult, with Alho looking likely to block. It turned out Johnston was just toying with us. He surprised the Finnish defence with a delicate chip across goal that left the keeper Lukas Hradecky stranded at the near post.
Hradecky helplessly watched the ball float over his head into the path of Evan Ferguson, who leapt powerfully through the defenders to head Ireland into the lead. Old-fashioned dribbly wide man play and a big centre-forward’s thumping header: proper football. The mood at half-time was bullish.
“Not a bad game,” an Ireland fan said to me at the break. (In comparison to many recent games this was a giddy review). “You know who he reminds me of, Smithwicks?” “Szmodics?” “Yeah sorry, Szmodics.
The way he plays, he reminds me of Craig Bellamy.” You can see it – something about the slightly hunched posture and the determined running, the sparky tenacious way he attacks the game. A Craig Bellamy regen would do very nicely for Ireland at this time.
The team was set up in a way that suited him. Uefa announced Ireland’s formation as 4-4-2 but watching them on the pitch it looked more .