Bogdan out to get in Brendan's bad books against Northern Ireland
Adam Bogdan hopes Hungary spoil Northern Ireland’s Euro 2016 party – so he can pull Brendan Rodgers’ leg.
Rodgers is a proud Irishman, and his cousin Nigel Worthington managed their homeland having played at the 1986 World Cup when they last reached a major finals.
Bogdan, 27, says all this gives extra spice to Monday’s crunch qualifier against Hungary at Windsor Park in Belfast, where the hosts will book their ticket to the tournament in France next summer if they win.
“Of course, it makes it really interesting that we have a Northern Irish manager at Liverpool, but there’s a job to be done and we can talk about it after,” said the Reds' Hungarian goalkeeper.
“Brendan is not the manager of Northern Ireland, so I’m hoping there is no conflict of interest!
“Hopefully when we come back, we can have a laugh. But right now, there is a job to be done.”
Group leaders Northern Ireland can almost smell the croissants after Friday's victory in the Faroe Islands and Bogdan applauded their transformation under boss Michael O’Neill.
Hungary also need a win to maintain their automatic qualification hopes and Bogdan said: “It’s a very important game for both teams. Ideally we want to win or at least get a result.
“It’s going to be a hard game.
"Northern Ireland are doing really well in the competition — unlike in previous qualifying. In this campaign they are doing really well so I’m sure it’s going to be hard to get a result against them, especially away.
"I just hope we get a result.”
The Irish are the group’s fifth seeds and O’Neill claims no one expected them to do so well.
“We’re in a situation we never could have dreamed about at the start of the campaign,” he said. “When we talked about the European campaign, we were very enthused by the fact that third place could get you a play-off place.
“I think we’ve got third now. So hopefully we can look forward to going a step further than that.”
Source: Daily Mirror
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