Shay Given believes Ireland face a tougher task against the current Spain team in Thursday’s Euro 2012 Group C clash than the one that ended his World Cup dream in 2002.
June 16, 2002, is a day Given will never forget - when Gaizka Mendieta’s penalty ended Ireland’s involvement in the tournament after 120 minutes in which Mick McCarthy’s men had pushed the Spaniards all the way.
The second round penalty shootout defeat ended a brave Irish challenge, that had flourished despite the eve of tournament departure of star player Roy Keane.
This year, the first time Ireland have returned to a major finals since 2002, there was no such scandal.
But after their opening game defeat to Croatia on Sunday, Ireland are under intense pressure to get a result against an all-conquering Spanish team intent on creating even more history.
“I mainly remember we should have won the game,” Given said of his memory of the 2002 meeting.
“We lost on penalties and I was disappointed with the shoot-out but over the course of the game we should have won it. We had the better chances.
“I know they’ve come on so much since then, they were famously known as the team that never achieved anything at major championships, but they’ve certainly put that one to bed.
“They’ve won everything since that night, when it felt like we should have won, but they’ve come a long way since then. It’ll be a tougher task for us than then, certainly.”
It was always likely to be a tough task for Ireland, who had hoped to get a result against Croatia and then try and avoid defeat against Spain, setting up a final game showdown with Italy.
With four points, at least, required from the remaining two games, Ireland need a performance of a lifetime.
In truth, their performance against Croatia was one of the poorest under Giovanni Trapattoni’s management, and some players have privately admitted to nerves at kick off.
With 90 minutes under their belt, they are hoping for an improvement in game two.
“We said all last week how important the first game was and we’ve got off to a bad start, of course, so it’s a huge task for us now,” Given conceded.
“We’ve got to forget about what happened at the weekend and move on because we can’t change that result, no matter how much we talk about it, write about it or whatever.
“We’re all disappointed of course, but we can only change what happens against Spain on Thursday and that’s the most important thing. We’ve got to look forward because Croatia has gone.
“We know what’s coming, we’ve just got to try and combat that. We saw England beat Spain 1-0 a few months ago at Wembley, so we can take things from that and how they played and hopefully we can do something similar.
“We can hurt them. We won’t be trying to get everybody behind the ball, we’ll try and cause them some problems as well.
“One of the biggest things will probably be set-pieces.
“They’re renowned for maybe not being the biggest team in the competition and we’ve got some big players in our team, so if we get some of the right deliveries in there, as we saw against Croatia with the goal we scored, we’ve got the players who can get onto to balls in the box.”