Jonas Wind scored the only goal of the game to help Denmark produce one of the narrow football scores of the weekend in Euro 2024 qualifying. Despite dominating the game and rightfully taking the lead thanks to Jonas Wind shortly after halftime, Kasper Hjulmand’s team appeared to have earned a point when Callum Marshall, a West Ham teenager making his senior debut, scored seconds before the final whistle. Jordan Thompson lifted the ball into the box before helping it into Marshall, but after almost five minutes of review, VAR Tomasz Kwiatkowski informed Daniel Stefanski that Jonny Evans had entered the box from an offside position. As a result, the goal was declared invalid.
In Kazakhstan’s penultimate qualifying encounter in March, Kasper Hjulmand’s team grabbed a 2-0 lead before giving up three goals in the closing 17 minutes to suffer an unexpected 3-2 loss. There was an obvious feeling of humiliation. The Danish supporters’ determination to get revenge on a Northern Ireland team that appeared to be vulnerable on paper was evident right away. Only four of the eleven players in the starting lineup had more than 30 caps when Michael O’Neill named teenagers Conor Bradley, Shea Charles, and Isaac Price in his side due to injury. This was the first time in more than 12 years that the Green and White Army had done so.
The first half was frequently punctuated by jeers and whistles, especially when the hosts weren’t perceived to be exhibiting enough attacking intent or when the visitors tried to calm down the pace. Denmark did attack its opponents’ defenses for the most part, but the gaps they opened up were successfully closed. Crystal Palace’s Joachim Anderson had perhaps the finest opportunity of the half when he was permitted to advance from defense and fire a shot directly at Bailey Peacock-Farrell. Christian Eriksen also attempted a daring free kick from 30 yards out that went past the crossbar.
But they didn’t really start to make their domination matter until the second minute of the second half. Ciaron Brown barely managed to half-clear a teaser ball in from the left until Wind, who chested the ball down and steered it in at the near post. After the interval, Northern Ireland showed some of their potential. Perhaps most memorably, Price pursued a long ball down the left, raced into the box with real danger, and forced a fantastic stop from Kasper Schmeichel.
Marshall responded swiftly nine minutes after making his senior football debut to assist Evans’ header over the goal line after Jordan Thompson floated the ball into the penalty area from the right wing. He jumped over the billboards and delightedly danced with the traveling supporters. Ecstasy quickly changed to pain, however, as O’Neill’s team was denied a point because the 18-year-old was deprived of his opportunity following an exceptionally drawn-out VAR review.
“VAR is used to overturn clear and apparent mistakes that the referee could make, not to deny goals like that. The referee failed to see that. When we go back and examine the moment the kick was made, none of the videos that I have seen make it evident that Jonny is offside. It’s obvious that he is not offside when the ball comes his way, therefore I don’t see why you would go looking for that,” Northern Ireland manager Michael O’Neill said. “Against a very good opposition tonight, we had six U21 players on the pitch, and at times, you could see it in the ferocity and duels of the game. We conceded a bad goal, but we played excellently by giving Denmark little chances in the opening period. After we conceded the awful goal, I believed we played brilliantly for staying in the match. Evans, Saville, McNair, and the younger guys all played well; they stayed in the game and refused to let themselves go farther down. We were aware that if we could reach the last 15-20 minutes of the game, we might be able to generate an opportunity, and we succeeded in doing so.”
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