nice high scoring game

best match so far!

Can someone please tell the lads in Green that Quinn is not on the team anymore? Stop bogging the ball up to him.
This should have stayed 3-0 to the Russkis, dodgy peno, and lucky 2nd.

Better get the act together for Slovakia.

good game for Russia until the lost 2 goals

St.Ledger should have been sent off. Very stupid tackle by very stupid palyer

Irish play non-modern football of high balls into the box - sort of hail mary's from the Championship league. Most of their goals (like the 2nd) are just accidents in the box. You can't beat strong teams playing this way.

wonderful game..some great individual performances :)

Nerve wrecking pressure around 3:00

Russia played very good football at times, but i think we shud hav done alot better. At least we got the two goals which will help for goal difference.

Wow. What a ride. Fantastic, spectacular game.

Aside from often excellent passing and communication, Russia's offensive success is greatly due to Arshavin's vision and ability - he is arguably the architect and conductor of the Russian attack - and I believe that little dude is the most efficient player I currently know in the game, club or country - despite all the noise from his critics who have been calling him "lazy" for the past year or so. (Do me a favor, look at his stats so far this season - whether the EPL or the UCL - and then tell me if he is "not producing.")
In this match, for example:
Russia's first goal - off his set piece.
Then - the slicing thread to Anyukov that led to a second goal, by Dzagoev.
The sick backheel down the sideline to Zhirkov (to the unfortunate stumble/shank by Pogrebnyak) should have produced a goal - there is no doubt about that.
And, then, the final whistle blows just as he is on an awesome break - of course...
Surely the ref could have given him another five seconds?...

...Ireland did an amazing job of taking over the initiative late in the game - seemingly to the point of overturning the tables. The last minutes of the game really did show a great resurgence of Ireland's spirit but, alas, the hosts ran out of time.

that was not a penalty, akinfeev handled the ball inside the box and the irish push the russian before the russian pull his shirt, what the heck!~ the second commentator is sooooo obviously bias....

whether or not it was a dive is obvious...of course he dove...that's his job...every player in football dives...integrity is a thing of the past...so to call Keane a cheat is ludicrous...look at your favorite squad and there is a guaranteed diver at every position...scrappy game though...deserved score in the end...Ireland looked just as mediocre as their English neighbors

nice match , a thriller , but unlucky Ireland , even with kean dive

Granted that Keane's penalty was not clear-cut and there was a lot of luck involved in that (to put it mildly) but even then Ireland takes the cake for being the most unluckiest teams in World Football. A wrong ref. call gave a freekick the wrong way to cause the first Russian goal, then Akinfeev was handling the ball outside the box which was missed, then there was some shirt pulling by a Russian (I think Zhirkov) but the call was for a Russian freekick, the 3rd Russian goal was a result of a deflection going in. Need I mention the France game from the World Cup qualifiers?

Regardless of all of that, this was a really really exciting and interesting game for the neutral like me, made up for some great watching!

Russia's shirt is quite nice; I like it!