Ireland’s U19 Women’s soccer team scored a famous victory over Spain on their debut appearance at the UEFA U19 European Championship Finals. A single goal from Raheny United’s Clare Shine was enough to secure the points and prove her fitness after breaking her leg only ten weeks ago.
The victory has made headlines on the UEFA website and in media across Europe. Spain, along with Germany and England are one of the three seeded teams in the tournament who did not have to go through the initial qualifying round back last September.
England are another of those three and Ireland’s next opponents on Friday. They lost their opening fixture 2-0 to Sweden so a win would set up Ireland for a place in the tournament semi finals.
The final group game is on Monday 21st against Sweden. The semi final involving the group winner and the Final on the 27th July will both be televised live by Eurosport.
“We are really pleased with the result and today I’m really proud to be Irish,” said team coach David Connell.
“Today we’ve proved a lot of people wrong. Not only did we work really hard but we played some nice football, tough but fair. We are a real team and the girls are all superstars. We have three mountains to climb in this group and today we climbed one of them.”
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