Vera Pauw last night hailed her “tigers” as Ireland claimed a famous 1-1 draw away to Sweden yesterday.
The Girls in Green were 11 minutes away from taking victory — but the significance of becoming the first team to take home points off Sweden in 12 years wasn’t lost on the Irish boss.
“I’m the proudest one in the room, I think, at this moment,” she beamed, as she sat beside goalscorer Katie McCabe.
“I’ve said before and I have joked a bit about the tigers, but they are.... you’ve seen tonight again, nobody wins easy from us.
Contagious
“That starts with the absolute passion of these players, to be able to give up everything for their country.
“That’s contagious, and it’s contagious to the nation I hope, contagious to the staff and I hope that we can add what they need so that they can go further and further and further.
“Because this team deserves it. If there’s one team in the world that deserves the next step, then it’s this team.”
While Ireland slipped from second to third last night in Group A, thanks to Finland’s 6-0 win against Georgia, they remain in the driving seat for the play-offs.
“I am so proud,” Pauw continued. “It is amazing, second in the world and we could have won.
“We had a lot of luck to stay in the game but we executed the game-plan phenomenally.
“It was a constant storm, and we shifted well and we couldn’t get forward at the end and that made it difficult to keep the ball out.”
McCabe wasn’t getting too far ahead of herself after the famous result.
“We still have three games to go. We’re fully focused on the job in hand but hopefully we can get there,” she said.
“Ten more minutes and we could have got the three points. Unfortunately I gave away the ball.
“Sweden were relentless. They hit the bar. We had some world-class saves [Courtney Brosnan].
“They deserved the draw because they were at us for 90 minutes.
“Our target was not to lose a game and to get a point away from home against the second-best team in the world, I’ll take that.”
Next up is Georgia away — and despite their 11-0 defeat last year in Tallaght, the of the timing of the clash is not great.
It comes on June 27, six weeks after many of Pauw’s players finish their club campaign.
But McCabe insisted: “We’re professionals, I think we’re quite used to having those June fixtures. We’ll be 100 per cent focused.”
Pauw had some high praise for Brosnan, who has struggled for game-time at Everton, but was chosen ahead of Megan Walsh.
“Megan had Covid last week and while she had recovered she wasn’t back to her old self,” said Pauw.
“We went for the keeper who was the sharpest. She responded tremendously and made crazy saves.”
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