Northern Ireland's Isaac Price wants 'extra boost' off fans in Belfast clash with Iceland
Isaac Price wants to use Tuesday’s game against Iceland to send Northern Ireland into their World Cup qualifying campaign on the right foot.
Michael O’Neill saw Saturday’s 2-1 friendly defeat away to Denmark as another valuable learning exercise for his young squad against top-level opposition, but the priority in their final warm-up game in Belfast is to secure a confidence-boosting win.
“It’s definitely a game that we’ll look to go and win,” Price said. “We want more of the ball, to show a little bit more quality when we have the ball.
“It’s at home and I think all the team knows how well we do at home and it gives the team a little bit of an extra boost.”
Denmark offered up exactly the sort of test Northern Ireland had expected, having 73 per cent of possession and piling on the pressure late on, with Christian Eriksen scoring a 67th-minute winner after Gustav Isaksen had cancelled out Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg’s early own goal.
Isaksen’s equaliser came in the second minute of first-half stoppage time and from Denmark’s first shot on target.
“I think it killed us a little bit,” Price said. “We’d worked so hard for 45 minutes and then we’ve obviously got a goal and to concede so late in the first half, you’re going into half-time and on a little bit of a downer…
“I think because it was so late on, it’s a kick in the teeth really. But they’ve got quality players and he’s shown his quality there.”
Having defended so well for long periods, cracks began to appear for Northern Ireland in the final stages, with O’Neill’s men guilty of giving the ball away too many times.
But, unlike in the 5-1 loss to Sweden in March, they kept the score down thanks to some goal-line clearances from Daniel Ballard and Trai Hume and some excellent saves from Pierce Charles, who replaced the injured Conor Hazard at half-time.
“I think we had a pretty good game plan from the start,” Price added. “And I thought we dug in well, but obviously their quality shone through in the second half and we got beaten in the end.
“But I think there’s a lot of improvement from previous games and it could have quite easily gone like it did in Sweden and gone three, four, five, but we dug in well and kept it at two.”