🚨 Caoimhín Kelleher on why he refused the handshake with Dor Peretz:
🎙️ “I know people will talk about the handshake, and I understand why. But for me, this wasn’t about disrespecting Dor Peretz as a person. It was about making a statement about what is happening around this situation. Sometimes you have to decide where you stand, even when people don’t agree with you.”
“I wore the captain’s armband tonight, and I knew what that responsibility meant. Respect doesn’t always mean pretending everything is normal. We had already made our position clear before the game, and this was another way of showing that we weren’t going to ignore what is happening.”
“And yes, this has happened before. Dara O’Shea made the same decision in the first game, so nobody should be pretending this suddenly came out of nowhere. Tonight I simply carried on what the team had already decided.”
“Football is supposed to bring people together, but sometimes football also becomes a platform for saying something bigger than the 90 minutes. People can disagree with the decision, they can criticise me, they can criticise Ireland that’s football. But don’t confuse a political protest with hatred for another player.”
𝐈𝐍𝐃𝐎𝐍𝐄𝐒𝐈𝐀 🟰 𝐇𝐈𝐒𝐓𝐎𝐑𝐘 𝐌𝐀𝐊𝐄𝐑𝐒 🇮🇩🏆
They've waited such a long time for a trophy... 1991 was their last official trophy.
Now they've done it again, making their whole country proud by winning the first-ever FIFA ASEAN Cup. 🏆
What a moment for them and their whole country. 🥹🫶