Trai Hume believes clash with Germany even bigger after win over Slovakia
Trai Hume believes Northern Ireland’s World Cup qualifier against Germany on Monday night will be an even bigger occasion after a 2-0 win over Slovakia on Friday kept them in the thick of the fight in Group A.
Hume scored his first international goal to seal the victory after Patrik Hrosovsky’s first-half own goal had put Northern Ireland in front, a deserved win for an excellent all-round performance on the night.
It leaves Northern Ireland level with both Germany and Slovakia on six points at the midway point of the campaign, going into Michael O’Neill’s 100th match in charge when Germany visit Windsor Park on Monday night.
“We’re all even on six points and now the game on Monday is even bigger than it was before,” Hume said. “We’ll go into it, prepare, recover and be ready to try and win.”
Hume, playing in his 25th international, broke his goalscoring duck 10 minutes from time, capitalising on a poor punch from Martin Dubravka by neatly lifting the ball over the Burnley goalkeeper and into an empty net from the edge of the box.
“It was a great feeling, my first goal, and hopefully I can chip in with some more,” said Hume, who admitted it was not the sort of moment a defender spends much time dreaming of.
“I’m not much of a goalscorer so it’s not something I’d have thought of,” he said. “It’s one of the moments you’ll cherish for the rest of your life. I had a lot of family there, girlfriend, so it’s good to have them there to enjoy it.”
The second goal was needed to lock down a win that Northern Ireland deserved for a performance Hume described as “outstanding” as they played on the front foot almost from start to finish.
“Throughout the week we spoke about getting a lot of pressure high up the pitch, bringing the game to them,” the Sunderland defender said. “We’re at home, we want to ask questions and work hard. We were able to do that.
“Michael gave us the gameplan and all we had to do was go out and do that.
“I thought we were excellent through the 90 minutes and thoroughly deserved the three points. We were the better team, we brought the game to them. We probably could have had more on the night, we created a lot of chances. Hopefully it’ll be the same again on Monday.”
Northern Ireland go into Monday’s match unbeaten in seven at home, having conceded only one goal in that run.
“I’ve said it before we played (Iceland in June), we have a good record at home,” Hume added. “We want to keep that. This is home, where we play, we have to be hard to beat, work hard. I didn’t know we’d kept that many clean sheets at home but it’s great, we have to keep that going.”