TRAI Hume believes Northern Ireland’s young players will ignore any pressure to win their Nations League group and play without fear when they face Belarus on Friday.
Michael O’Neill’s squad could secure promotion back to League B if they win that match and Bulgaria fail to beat Luxembourg, who Northern Ireland face in their final group game away from home next week.
But Hume said the players are not getting bogged down in permutations as they look to build on last month’s 5-0 thrashing of Bulgaria at Windsor Park.
“Young players usually don’t play with fear,” said Hume, speaking from Sunderland experience.
“You got out there trying to impress and show what you can do as best as you can and that’s what we keep trying to do.”
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The win over Bulgaria will go down as one of the great nights at Windsor Park in recent memory but, although the score was an exception, there is an argument that the performance was not that different to some of the others Northern Ireland have put in recently.
A few days earlier Northern Ireland utterly dominated the first half of their goalless draw against Belarus but could not take their chances, something that was not a problem against Bulgaria.
“I think we have that in the locker,” Hume added. “Look at the Belarus first half, we could have been three or four goals up at half-time but their keeper had a good game and you could say we didn’t take our chances.”
While the squad and staff remain on a high from beating Bulgaria, that goalless draw against Belarus in Zalaegerszeg, Hungary, has to be on everyone’s minds as they look to Friday night.
The first half can breed confidence but after the break Belarus sat much deeper and made it difficult for Northern Ireland to create chances – an approach which may well be replicated at Windsor Park.
Ali McCann said Northern Ireland needed to look at both sides of that game during this week’s preparations.
“They’ll probably be looking at it thinking they got more joy in the second half, setting up a bit deeper and making us break them down because the first half was more open, so it will be a different challenge,” the Preston midfielder said.
“I’m sure they’ll come and sit in and make it hard for us but again, we look at first half and how we created so many chances and we’ll try to do that on Friday. The first half against Belarus can give us loads of confidence that we can turn them over at home.”
Northern Ireland have made huge strides in the last 12 months, starting with the Euro 2024 qualifying win over Denmark, continuing with that friendly win over Scotland in Glasgow and now a Nations League campaign which has them top of League C Group 3 going into their final two games.
For a young squad still in the infancy of its development, securing promotion would be a major statement going into next year’s World Cup qualifying campaign.
“We’ve put ourselves in a good position now and we just want to win the last two games and stay top of the group and see what happens after that,” McCann said.
“I don’t think the young lads in the group feel any sort of pressure. Previous Nations League campaigns have been really difficult and we have found ourselves in Pot C, but at the start of this campaign it was all about trying to win the group and we’ve put ourselves in a good position to do that.
“If we win and results go our way, we could do it on Friday, but if not, we go into the second game wanting to win no matter what happens.”
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