\n<\/p>\n
Northern Ireland captain Jackie Burns says interim manager Kris Lindsay has given the players “something to build on” despite a 2-0 defeat in Switzerland in World Cup qualifying.<\/b><\/p>\n
Riola Xhemaili opened the scoring in the 22nd minute from a corner and Northern Ireland, despite creating limited opportunities, frustrated the hosts.<\/p>\n
However, their resolve was broken in injury time as Svenja Folmli scored from 20 yards to make sure the Swiss, who reached the quarter-finals of Euro 2025, started with an opening three points.<\/p>\n
Lindsay will be in charge for at least the opening set of qualifiers after being named as interim manager to replace Tanya Oxtoby, who left her role in November.<\/p>\n
Northern Ireland will look to bounce back at home to Turkey, who beat Malta 3-0 in their opener, on Saturday.<\/p>\n
“It’s something to build on and Kris has given us free rein. It’s the belief and the bravery to go out and just play,” Burns said.<\/p>\n
“We’re still in the building process and hopefully, come Saturday, it will be a better performance.”<\/p>\n
Burns was handed the armband in the absence of regular skipper Simone Magill, who announced her pregnancy in November.<\/p>\n
The goalkeeper, who joined Bristol City in January, said it was “tough” to lose the game but “it was full of positives”.<\/p>\n
“We’re disappointed that we’ve conceded two goals, but we put in a really solid performance from start to finish,” Burns added.<\/p>\n
“It was a performance that had been a long time coming and we defended for our lives, which really showed.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Northern Ireland captain Jackie Burns says interim manager Kris Lindsay has given the players “something to build on” despite a 2-0 defeat in Switzerland in World Cup qualifying. Riola Xhemaili opened the scoring in the 22nd minute from a corner and Northern Ireland, despite creating limited opportunities, frustrated the hosts. However, their resolve was broken<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9689,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9688","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-football"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9688","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9688"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9688\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}