Referee should ‘be tougher’ in Northern Ireland’s loss to Slovakia says Michael O’neill

Kosice’s loss hurt their hopes of making it to North America, however, as they enter the playoffs among the fourth-seeded group.

Slovakia initially thought they had taken the lead in the 56th minute when Lukas Haraslin’s free kick went past Bailey Peacock-Farrelling in the sight of the Northern Ireland stopper.

Just eight minutes later, they had another strike disallowed by VAR after Strelec was penalized for ball handling.

O’Neill felt that decisions to prevent previous efforts played into the late winner.

“It was a clear push to Daniel Ballard in the corner, two hands behind him,” O’Neill said.

“Other goals that are not prohibited should not be allowed. The first is not yet, the lines appear clear and the second is handball.

“You have to look at each incident on its own merit, you can’t approach the whole incident differently from how you refer to the other two incidents.”

After the goal, Ballard was sent off for a second yellow and midfielder George George George George George was booked with now playing from Spense’s Monday game.

In the second yellow yellow, O’Neill said: “The Slovakian dug that caused anything.”

“The (second) yellow card for Daniel was a joke,” the manager continued.

“When you look back on it, it was poor.”

“He is a top referee, he has repeated the Champions League Finals, he has to ignore the goal.”

The victory, which kept alive the hope of the cliffs of automatic marriage for the next tournament of the summer, pointed out many celebrations of O’Neill who described their reaction as “disappointing”.

“Everything was on the line for Slovakia. You could tell that by the way their technical area behaved towards the end of the game. Which was disappointing.

“Their coach failed not to shake my hand.

“In the end, we made Slovakia feel good because they have a chance to go to Germany and win the group.”