Jason Knight says Ireland players will ‘have a deeper talk’ about Israel games on Friday

Midfielder Jason Knight believes Ireland’s Nations League games against Israel should not go ahead, but an eleventh-hour boycott of the games by the Irish players is not on the cards.

The Irish players will meet on Friday morning to formalise a unified position ahead of the meeting with Israel in Debrecen on Sunday, and while nothing is yet confirmed, it is understood they are likely to at least donate their match fees from both Israel games to a charity operating in Gaza. They will proceed with the games, however, despite mounting public pressure to withdraw.

“Look it’s difficult, the manager, and Dara [O’Shea], and Nathan [Collins] spoke well about it,” said Knight after Ireland’s chastening 1-0 loss to Kosovo in Pristina. “I don’t think the game, obviously, should be going ahead, but it is going ahead. We’ll have a deeper talk about it and what that means, we’ll get our thoughts as a group and go from there.”

Asked whether he considered not joining the Irish squad in advance of these fixtures, Knight said, “I think it was a difficult one, obviously. It’s obviously big talk in Ireland. I have been focusing on my football in England in the Championship [with Bristol City]. But I knew this was coming so I had a think about it. We had chats about it with the players, and more senior players on what the step will be.”

Knight, meanwhile, admitted the Irish performance in Kosovo fell well short of their standard. The game was settled by Vedat Muriqi’s late goal, but where Caoimhín Kelleher was forced to pull off a string of fine saves and Jayson Molumby made a stunning goal-line clearance in the first half, Kosovo goalkeeper Arijanet Muric had to make just one save over the entire game.

“It’s not the way you want to start the campaign, they’re obviously a good team but I think we were definitely below our level,” said Knight. “It’s a disappointing goal to give away because it would have been a good result with the clean sheet.

“[We were] maybe a bit too passive at times. Didn’t get up to the ball. Second half, it got a bit better. But I think when you let good players around your box too easily, especially with the threats they’ve got, like you see with the goal, you’re going to come unstuck sooner rather than later.

“We didn’t give our forward players enough chances to score goals. They pinned us back a bit too much. But I do think there were even patches in the game and they took their big chance and we didn’t take our half-chances.”

When asked, Knight said he did not believe the intense public scrutiny around the Israel games affected preparations for Kosovo. “I don’t think so, it’s been very football-focused, looking forward to the Kosovo game. Nothing distracted us, it was just a disappointing night.”

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