Republic of Ireland ready to be pushed to new extremes as they look to upset the odds against Denmark

Kasper Schmeichel and Christian Eriksen didn’t exactly play their team's hopes down on the eve of Denmark’s 2018 World Cup play-off first leg with Ireland in Copenhagen, but one story has it that some of the squad have been going much further behind the scenes.

Senior players have been telling their club teammates that they should easily beat Ireland, because they’re just a much better side. As is the nature of these things in football, word of this got back to some in the Irish camp, and they have been eagerly spreading the word of Danish overconfidence to fire each other up. They’ve been using it as motivation.

It’s a little part of the story that feeds into what is actually probably the most finely balanced of all the play-offs, and will only further inflame it, further add to the tension.

It may not necessarily add to the emotion of the occasion, though, because that is likely to hit peaks and nadirs regardless of what happens. That is what this fixture guarantees. That is its glory, and its corresponding heartbreak.

This is when it is really worth watching international football, and worth getting excited about.

For all the debate about the faded grandeur of the level, and how it just cannot compete quality-wise with club football or overblown competitions like the Premier League, the truth is that this is one time when the Premier League cannot really compete with the emotion and drama a match like this will produce. It only rarely has this kind of finality, and never has this national meaning.

This is what makes two years of more turgid international fixtures worthwhile, as two mid-sized nations now find themselves potentially 180 minutes from the most prestigious and celebrated event in sport; the greatest stage.

There is no ennui about qualification campaigns here, only the energy of excitement and hope. Denmark are after all aiming for what would be their first qualification since Euro 2012 and only their fifth World Cup. Ireland are aiming for their first World Cup since 2002, and just their seventh qualification ever. These are the stakes. These are the shared sentiments.

“Qualifying for the Euros was great,” Martin O’Neill said of Ireland’s run to the last 16 in France last year, “but the World Cup is something else."

“We are very excited and don’t want to be at home watching on the telly as it’s boring,” Christian Eriksen said. “You enjoy the holiday but your mindset is somewhere else.”

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All of that should ensure there is a deeper utter commitment to this game that should well compensate for any lack in quality. It is not unfair to say that both countries have had far better generations, who played far more entertaining football. This Ireland are a long way from the freewheeling 2002 team, and the Danes are nowhere near the level of their flourishing 1986 side.

The one exception to that is the supremely in-form Eriksen, who will be by far the most important figure in the tie. He will be the player driving and conditioning every Danish attack, and demanding maximum concentration from the Irish defence.

He is the sole world-class player on the pitch and one Danish newspaper calculated that his £90m price - a fee Barcelona did contemplate paying in the summer - was almost the same as the entire Irish team. Given that this is the level Eriksen is now at, one widespread feeling is the World Cup is the level he now needs to playing at. He will be 26 by the time the tournament starts and thereby at the perfect age to illuminate such a stage.

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Then again, similar sentiments were expressed about recent Irish opponents like Gareth Bale and Zlatan Ibrahimovic, but the differences in quality weren’t really displayed in the games. Bale might have been missing for the 1-0 win away to Wales last month that got Ireland this far, but he did little in the first 0-0 draw in Dublin in March.

It was similar when the Irish faced Sweden in Euro 2016, given that Ibrahimovic was only as influential in that 1-1 group draw as Wes Hoolahan. They found a way to deal with such stars.

It reflects a real strength about Ireland, that has made many other figures around the Danish squad much more wary of this game, much more tentative. O’Neill’s side may not have a player of that calibre in the way they used to have current assistant manager Roy Keane when he was a midfielder - "an inspirational leader", as Schmeichel put it - but they do have a club side’s spirit and cohesion that very few international teams possess.

It is probably the quality that has most propelled this team, particularly because of how O’Neill has so played on it. They have produced a series of big wins and performances in big games, in a way that has even gone beyond Jack Charlton’s reign that saw three qualifications - and two for the World Cup - between 1986 and 1995.

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“They have a lot of players in top leagues, that’s an advantage," O'Neill said, "but we’ve overcome such advantages in the past.”

All of those in the home team's press conference admitted they would have to “break” Ireland’s spirit in order to beat them, with the pattern of the first leg likely to involve the away side trying to break up Danish attacks and then breaking through the pace of James McClean - their most important goalscorer.

It is going to be a night that pushes players to extremes, and pushes those emotions to extremes.

“You don’t want to die wondering what it’s like to play at a World Cup,” O’Neill finally said. That is something the Danes would find common ground with, but the difference is it will only make this tie wondrous for one of these teams.