Martin O'Neill has all but confirmed that Jon Walters is out of the Belgium game on Saturday with the Republic of Ireland manager expressing the hope after Wednesday's training session in Versailles that his more realistic aim now is to have the Stoke City striker available for next week's final group game against Italy.
“Jon is going to be struggling,” he said of the 32 year-old who took no real part in this morning’s in the squad’s first full run out since the 1-1 draw at the Stade de France. “But I think that if he doesn’t make this game then I’d be hoping he’ll maybe be fit for final game.
“He would have to do a lot of improving for him to come through and be ready for Saturday. If the game was tomorrow he wouldn’t make it. But if he thought capable of playing, that he could do same again in Italy game (as against Sweden) then I would certainly consider that.”
O’Neill said that he still has a lot of work to do on weighing up the Belgian performance against Italy on Monday evening but the talent of the group, he says, is beyond question.
“We’ll see how we approach it,” he said. “We need to sit down and look at game in its entirety. I saw second half but more as a fan than anything else. I need to sit down and study it up close.
“Belgium are a very talented side. We will have to deal with little (Eden) Hazard, one of best players playing in the world. They have players playing big, big matches everv single week at club level but they can only do so much as individuals.
“It will be a very different game for us but if we could take that performance against Sweden and produce something similar then I’d like to feel we can cause Belgium problems.”
Hazard and Kevin De Bruyne were both due to sit out training this afternoon but both are said to be on course to be available for the game despite lingering knee and muscle problems respectively.
All of the other Irish players trained normally this morning, including Jeff Hendrick who only played one competitive game in almost two months before Monday's game in which he was so impressive. Asked about the 24 year-old midfielder, O'Neill described his as "a revelation".
