Northern Ireland manager Michael O’Neill says playing Italy away in a World Cup play-off semi-final in March will be “tough”.
But he has urged his players to believe they can register what would be an incredible result on Italian soil.
It was confirmed today, at the play-offs draw at FIFA HQ in Switzerland, that Northern Ireland will play the Italians in a World Cup play-off semi-final next year.
O’Neill said: “It’s a tough draw. We always felt it would be. You have to take what you get in this situation. We always knew we were going to be away from home (in the semi-final).
“Italy will be as tough as we can get, but ultimately we have to believe we can go there and get an amazing result. It would be one of the biggest results in our history if we can do that. We have to believe as a young team that we are capable of doing that."
Northern Ireland finished third behind Germany (15 points) and Slovakia (12 points) in Group A of the European qualifiers, with nine points from six games.
The Northern Ireland boss pointed out: “We gave a good account of ourselves in our World Cup qualifying campaign away from home, albeit the result in Germany went away from us in the last 20 minutes and the game in Slovakia we lost via a corner in injury time.
“I think the team has developed over the six qualifying games and a big thing for us will be to be as strong as possible come March.
“We obviously dealt with injuries and some suspensions in the six games that we had and there’s no doubt that affected us, but hopefully we will be as close to full strength as possible in March.”
The play-off semi-final will be staged in Italy on 26 March, with the venue TBC.
And if Northern Ireland defeat the Italians they will play the winners of the semi-final between Wales and Bosnia and Herzegovina in the final on 31 March – and that game will also be away from home.
The play-offs will ultimately decide the four teams that will join the 12 European teams that have already qualified from the group stage at next year’s World Cup in USA, Canada and Mexico.
