Megan Connolly pleads with fans to stick by struggling Ireland after sixth successive game without a goal or a win

Ireland will now be relegated from their Nations League Group A3 of Euro 2025 qualifying, which included three of the world’s top six teams, but they do have a play-off guaranteed later this year.

They remain narrowly ahead of Poland in the quest to be seeded for that play-off, and midfielder Connolly insists Ireland can benefit later from the harsh lessons being applied now, the latest a sloppy 84th-minute winner by Magdalena Eriksson from a poorly defended corner.

“It’s big learnings, we’re playing the top teams in the world and that’s what we want,” said Connolly after Sweden completed a quick-fire double success after Friday’s much more comprehensive 3-0 win in Dublin.

“It’s not always going to look good, it’s not always going to be nice football. But it’s a group that wants to be better, that wants to learn, that wants to be able to compete against these teams.”

There are going to be games where it doesn’t look nice and we don’t play our best. But we’re trying to learn from it and implement the right things. And tonight showed that we want to be better and implement new things and compete.

Connolly echoed her manager Eileen Gleeson’s questioning of whether goalscorer Eriksson should have still been on the field, after escaping a second yellow for scything down Leanne Kiernan.

Ireland captain Katie McCabe wasn’t so lucky as she picked up her second yellow card of the campaign which will rule her out of next month’s trip to England.

“Obviously Katie gets a cheap second yellow in this campaign and Eriksson is already on a yellow in this game and in any other moment that is a second yellow card and she is sent off,” said Connolly.

“There were certain moments in the game that could have changed it. I think if she wasn’t already on a yellow, the ref would have given her a yellow.”