Ahead of Ireland's first leg of their Euro 2016 qualification playoff against Bosnia, all the talk was about the opponent's star players in Miralem Pjanic and Edin Dzeko.
And it was fairly understandable, the two AS Roma players have been in fine form in both the Italian league and Champions League so far this season, and although Dzeko did score the equaliser in Zenica, the feeling among Irish fans after the game was that more was expected of Bosnia's big name players.
Instead, almost all of the danger came down the right wing in the form of Edin Visca, who plays for Turkish club İstanbul Başakşehir. Speaking ahead of tomorrow night's second leg Ireland manager Martin O'Neill singled out Visca for praise and explained that Bosnia will look to feed him the ball whenever possible:
They raid down the right-hand side because they've got a very, very fine right winger. What they want to do is try to get it out to the little lad, who is exceptionally talented.
I think he could cause problems to anybody.
The 'little lad' certainly gave Stephen Ward a difficult time on Friday, and in fact the Burnley man was probably lucky not to be sent off for a second bookable offense shortly before he was sensibly called to the substitutes bench.
While we may have underestimated Visca's talents before the away leg, we will surely be factoring him into the gameplan now, although it would probably be smart to continue to plan for Pjanic and Dzeko too.
via Independent.ie
