Oct 4, 2026 · 10 min · 6 segments
Ireland face Israel for a second time now in Serbia, after their 3-0 defeat last week. Ciara was joined by Off The Ball's Football Correspondent Ben Symes for updates from Serbia. Off The Ball's…
Shane HannonGuest
Ciara KellyHost
To come to you, Shane, I mean, this time last week when I was in the studio, we were talking about the walkouts.
We were talking about the players and their mental ability to walk out onto a pitch and be able to focus and play a game of football.
And then they come out and they were unbelievable and despite the draw I suppose on Tuesday some really phenomenal football from Ireland let's talk about the game tonight does all of what happened yesterday play on the players minds does it actually have an influence in terms of how they head into that pitch how they face Israel and what Israel are they going to face this evening
I think it's revenge on the mind for the Israelis, but I think it's impossible to ignore all this and the impact this is having on the Irish players.
This is feeding into the dressing room without a shadow of a doubt because, as Ben has alluded to, a lot of the FBI staff are involved in this press conference yesterday, not just the manager.
And all of the charades that are going on at these press conferences have to be bleeding in.
I would expect a carbon copy tonight in terms of the The off-pitch stuff, the bowed heads from the Irish players, the no handshakes.
Even last week we saw when Irish players were fouled, they were refusing Israeli hands, helping them back up.
If Israel score, what sort of celebration? They've had some controversial celebrations in recent weeks, as we've seen recently.
The Republic of Ireland caught them by surprise and caught them in the hop massively last week, but that surprise element is gone.
But there was also the feeling last week that there's still a game to come a week later, that maybe people are holding things, not in reserve, but the tension is maybe being held in reserve.
We're only talking about another... really impressive Irish victory but yeah this evening is going to be a tense event both on and off the pitch for those who watch it a lot of people at home and I know a lot of journalists as well they just won't watch this game this evening it's certainly not a normal match we have commentary game of most if not all of Republic of Ireland's matches we don't have commentary of these two Israel games for obvious reasons so it's an interesting one we'll see what happens
To come to you, Shane, I mean, this time last week when I was in the studio, we were talking about the walkouts.
We were talking about the players and their mental ability to walk out onto a pitch and be able to focus and play a game of football.
And then they come out and they were unbelievable and despite the draw I suppose on Tuesday some really phenomenal football from Ireland let's talk about the game tonight does all of what happened yesterday play on the players minds does it actually have an influence in terms of how they head into that pitch how they face Israel and what Israel are they going to face this evening
I think it's revenge on the mind for the Israelis, but I think it's impossible to ignore all this and the impact this is having on the Irish players.
This is feeding into the dressing room without a shadow of a doubt because, as Ben has alluded to, a lot of the FBI staff are involved in this press conference yesterday, not just the manager.
And all of the charades that are going on at these press conferences have to be bleeding in.
I would expect a carbon copy tonight in terms of the The off-pitch stuff, the bowed heads from the Irish players, the no handshakes.
Even last week we saw when Irish players were fouled, they were refusing Israeli hands, helping them back up.
If Israel score, what sort of celebration? They've had some controversial celebrations in recent weeks, as we've seen recently.
The Republic of Ireland caught them by surprise and caught them in the hop massively last week, but that surprise element is gone.
But there was also the feeling last week that there's still a game to come a week later, that maybe people are holding things, not in reserve, but the tension is maybe being held in reserve.
We're only talking about another... really impressive Irish victory but yeah this evening is going to be a tense event both on and off the pitch for those who watch it a lot of people at home and I know a lot of journalists as well they just won't watch this game this evening it's certainly not a normal match we have commentary game of most if not all of Republic of Ireland's matches we don't have commentary of these two Israel games for obvious reasons so it's an interesting one we'll see what happens
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.