Why Florent Ghisolfi chose Sunderland as his next project
Sunderland defenders Dan Ballard and Trai Hume tasted defeat with Northern Ireland on Friday evening.
It was a frustrating night for Sunderland duo Dan Ballard and Trai Hume, with the former seeing red as Northern Ireland slumped to a late 1-0 defeat at the hands of Slovakia in a World Cup qualifier on Friday.
Michael O’Neill’s men now sit third in their qualifying group, but have been assured of a play-off spot and a chance to book their place at next summer’s tournament in North America. While some details are still subject to change, as it stands, Northern Ireland will visit either Italy, Turkey, Poland, or Hungary.
Before then, however, O’Neill’s side will have to put the disappointment of a testing night in Košice behind them. After Ballard came close to opening the scoring in the first half with a trademark towering header, Slovakia then had two goals ruled out after the interval - one for an adjudged offside and another following a VAR intervention on an incident of handball.
But there would still be plenty of drama to come. As the contest ticked over into stoppage time, chaos ensued as Slovakia delivered a teasing corner from out on the left; Ballard was seemingly bundled over in his own box and goalkeeper Bailey Peacock-Farrell misjudged the flight of the ball, leaving debutant Tomáš Bobček with a tap-in to seal all three points.
Ballard’s night would then go from bad to worse after he was dismissed for a second yellow card in the 99th minute for an apparent elbow on Napoli midfielder Stanislav Lobotka.
But despite his late sending off - which will rule him out of Monday’s final group stage encounter with Luxembourg - Ballard came in for plenty of praise for a customarily battling display. In their player ratings, national title BelfastLive claimed that the Sunderland talisman was: “Unlucky not to score in the first half; even more unfortunate to be sent off in the second”, while BBC Sport viewers voted him as their player of the match.
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What did Northern Ireland boss Michael O’Neill say about the decision to send off Sunderland defender Dan Ballard?
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Northern Ireland boss O’Neill pulled no punches in his post-match assessment of the referee’s performance in Slovakia. Addressing the perceived foul on Ballard in the build-up to the hosts’ winning goal, he said: "It was a clear push on Daniel Ballard at the corner, two hands in his back.
"The other goals that were disallowed should have been disallowed. The first one was offside, the lines show that clearly, and the second one was handball. You have to look at each incident on its own merit, you can't go cumulative and referee the last incident differently to how you refereed the other two incidents."
On the yellow card that led to Ballard's dismissal, O'Neill said: "The Slovakian dug-out that caused that as much as anything. The yellow card for Daniel is a joke. If you look at it back, it is poor. He is a top referee, he has refereed the Champions League final, he should have disallowed the goal."
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