Legendary American Football coach Bill Belichick has a simple message for Heimir Hallgrímsson and the Ireland football team ahead of tomorrow’s crucial World Cup play-off: Stick to the plan!
An eight time Super-bowl champion, with six of those wins coming as the head coach of the iconic New England Patriots, Belichick knows all about dealing with the pressure of big games.
Despite not being the biggest soccer-head, the 74-year-old thinks Ireland need to stick to their guns and go with what brought them to this stage, rather than ripping up the playbook and starting from scratch.
“Obviously, they are a very good team to get this far, so you’ve got to rely on the things that have gotten you to where you are,” said the University of North Carolina head coach at the launch of the Aer Lingus College Classic taking place at the Aviva Stadium this August.
“Don’t try to be something you’re not, don’t try to do something that you’ve never done before. Do what you have been doing to be successful to the best of your ability, and trust the process.
“They wouldn’t be where they are if they weren't successful at doing certain fundamental things well.”
As for what Heimir Hallgrímsson can do to get his players ready for the battle, Belichick has a simple tip.
“What I’ve always tried to do is make the situations in practice harder than they would be in the game.
“Things that we deal with in our game, like the play clock, crowd noise etc. I always try to make it as hard as possible for our team so that when we get into those situations, they were used to dealing with them.
“I think if you are prepared to do hard things, when hard things come up you can do them. If you are not prepared for them, then sometimes you look at that and think “I don’t know if I can deal with that.”
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