Northern Ireland: Nations League promotion an important step – Michael O’Neill

The Northern Ireland manager is pleased that uncertainty over whether Belarus would be granted visas for the game to be played in Belfast was allayed last week.

“It was difficult to prepare,” he admitted.

“Obviously for the [Irish Football] Association it’s difficult with that uncertainty. You want to play at home, financially it would have been difficult for us to lose out.

“Playing in an empty stadium or even with a limited number of our fans, who would have been able to travel, wouldn’t have been ideal.

“It has been a little bit tricky. We’ve based ourselves in Manchester for a number of the games and had really good training camps so we’ll base ourselves in Belfast from Sunday night.”

Following an emphatic 5-0 win over Bulgaria at Windsor Park last time out, all tickets have already been sold for the Friday 15 November match against Belarus, who are second in the group with six points from three games.

O’Neill added: “The good thing is there is a lot of positivity around the team at this time and it’s good for us to be in Northern Ireland when there is that positivity and hopefully that feeds through to the boys as well.”