Spitting allegation mars Ireland-Israel draw as political tensions overshadow football

The match ended in a draw, but the real contest had nothing to do with the scoreline. Ireland and Israel played to a 1-1 tie on Sunday in Serbia, the second of two UEFA Nations League fixtures that became less about football than about the weight of geopolitics pressing down on every moment of play.

The two teams had met a week earlier in Hungary, where Ireland won 3-0 behind closed doors after facing pressure from supporters and politicians at home to withdraw entirely from the fixtures. That first match was tense. This one, played again without spectators in Belgrade, was tenser still. There were no pre-match handshakes, no exchange of pennants. When each national anthem played, the opposing players bowed their heads in silence. Ireland's squad wore black armbands for the victims of Israel's war in Gaza. Israel's players wore black armbands for the victims of the October 7, 2023 attack that began the conflict. Two nations, two griefs, no common ground.

Troy Parrott scored from the penalty spot in the 39th minute to give Ireland the lead. Dor Peretz equalized immediately after halftime with Israel's first shot on target. The match itself was poor—neither side created much, Israel struck the woodwork twice, and the game drifted toward its conclusion without drama or quality. But in the tunnel at halftime, something happened that would outlast the final whistle.

Damien Doyle, one of Ireland's coaching staff, accused an Israeli player of spitting at him after the teams left the field. The allegation surfaced in Irish media reports and was raised at the post-match news conference. Ireland's manager, Heimir Hallgrimsson, was present for whatever occurred but offered no details. "I was there. I'm not going to comment," he said. "It's something a disciplinary committee will look at." Hallgrimsson, an Icelandic coach who had steered his team through two weeks of extraordinary pressure, seemed exhausted by the entire ordeal. "I'm absolutely delighted this is finished," he told reporters. "It's taken a toll out of us all. I've given so much credit to the players. They have been absolutely amazing in tough times, and I wish no national team to go through what we have gone through for the last two weeks."

Israel's coach, Ran Ben-Shimon, said he had been in the dressing room during halftime and saw nothing. He promised to investigate and respond later. When asked about the broader atmosphere and whether his players had been overly aggressive, Ben-Shimon pushed back. "When I come to a game, I say to my players, 'This is the best way to play the cleanest football as you can, but be aggressive.' I never say to injure someone; this is not our way. We are very human, human beings; we are very moral human beings," he said. He welcomed his team's response to the 3-0 defeat in the first match, framing the draw as evidence of resilience.

The results left Ireland third in Group B3 with five points, three behind Austria. Kosovo sat second on goal difference. Israel remained at the bottom with two points from two matches. But the standings felt almost incidental. What mattered was that the two-week ordeal was over, that no more matches between these teams loomed in the immediate future, and that a disciplinary process would now examine what happened in that tunnel. The Football Association of Ireland had chosen to stage both matches away from home, behind closed doors, to manage the political pressure. It had not been enough to prevent the tension from boiling over. Whether a committee review would clarify what happened, or whether it would simply add another layer of dispute to an already fractured encounter, remained to be seen.