Ireland v Spain: Three things to watch

With Conor Sammon poised to give the Spaniards a grilling tonight, what can we expect from a friendly against the best team in the world?

Conor Sammon

It seemed like a strange choice at first, but there's definitely a method to the madness from Trapattoni. Both Barcelona and Spain have a serious weakness from set pieces, which many teams have tried to exploit. If there's one man in the Irish set-up that has the ability to give the Spaniards a difficult time with the ball in the air, it's Conor Sammon. He showed at the weekend as well that he's got good awareness in the box, when he fired across the box to give Robbie Keane a simple goal, and we'll certainly be hoping for more of the same tonight. That said, he'll have his work cut out for him from a group of defenders that have a whole heap of experience at the highest level of the game. Still, they've never come across the big man before, and the Sammon of College has some leap on him. We're not expecting neat triangles in attack from Trap's men, but these fancy Dan foreign types might not like it up them on a lovely & mild summery Tuesday in New York.

Seamus Coleman in midfield

He's had a great few games for Ireland coming up from the back, but there's not doubting that the real strength in Coleman's game is in his ability to attack. He's very reliable when it comes to taking his man on, as well as finding space to get a good cross into the box. It wouldn't be too odd to think that the selection of Coleman in midfield and Sammon up front are somehow related, and if there's quality delivery from the wings there could actually be some problems caused by Ireland for the Spanish tonight. That said, we're unlikely to really see much of the ball, as Spain's insistence on domination of the possession stats means that they will really limit the damage that Ireland could inflict on them. Thanks to Trap's tactics though, we're pretty adroit at playing well when we don't have the ball, but for the love of all that is holy we hope they don't pull our pants down, pour themselves out a lovely glass of wine (something from the Ribera del Duero region, we hear they like anything with a good tempranillo grape), munch down on some sumptuous Serrano ham and proceed to dole out the leisurely spanking that they gave us in the Euros. To be fair to La Roja, they almost seemed sorry that they scored the last goal. Unlike the Germans, they showed no mercy.

Penalties

Let's just hope that if we do get a penalty tonight, it goes better than it did in 2002. Sorry Kevin.