Women’s Euros will come ‘too soon’ for Northern Ireland – Kenny Shiels

Kenny Shiels has admitted Northern Ireland’s presence at the Women’s Euros this summer has probably come too soon.

Shiels’ side booked their ticket for the tournament in England, which gets under way next month, with a play-off victory over Ukraine to seal their first ever qualification for a major event, but he is under no illusions as to the task they face.

Northern Ireland have been drawn in a group with the hosts, Austria and Norway, three sides their manager believes will have a say in the latter stages of the competition.

He said: “We’ve probably reached these finals too soon in terms of being ready, but we’ll see because I hope the girls can contradict that and go and get a result against Norway and get a result against Austria as well.”

Shiels’ side, who are ranked 47 by FIFA, take on 19th-placed Belgium in a friendly in Antwerp on Thursday evening in their only warm-up game – he had hoped to arrange three – having seen the Belgians lose 3-0 to England at Molineux last week.

Asked what he had learned from that encounter, Shiels said: “We learned that they’re better than us. But they’re good yardsticks.

“You can see how good England are, the best team in the world, best players in the world, so you would expect them to win it.

“I think everybody expects England to win the Euros and probably you’re looking at Norway as being potential finalists, so I would think if you were to ask people in the women’s game, ‘Can you predict the final?’, two of them will probably come from our group.

“But we don’t look at that. I’m not versed to talk about who’s going to win it, I just want to do as well for my country as I can so that the players get some experience, some happiness, everything.

“We’ve been deprived of happy things