'Rock bottom' to Euro 2016 - how Luxembourg lesson pushed NI towards history

Luxembourg won a first World Cup qualifier in 41 years against Northern Ireland in 2013

Fifa World Cup qualifier: Luxembourg v Northern Ireland

Venue: Stade de Luxembourg, Luxembourg Date: Thursday, 4 September Kick-off: 19:45 BST

Coverage: Watch live on BBC Two NI, BBC Three, BBC iPlayer, BBC Sport website and app

"Sometimes when you hit rock bottom, there's only one place to go and that's to come back from it."

If ever there was a case of one step forward, two steps back.

When Northern Ireland travelled to Luxembourg in September 2013, they did so with Michael O'Neill's first spell in charge of the side seemingly gathering some belated momentum.

A month prior, the new manager enjoyed a first win at the 10th time of asking with a 1-0 victory over Fabio Capello's Russia at Windsor Park.

Then, only four days before their ill-fated trip to western Europe, they had led Portugal in Belfast with just over 20 minutes remaining, only to be undone by a Cristiano Ronaldo hat-trick.

There was little, therefore, to suggest they were about to come unstuck against a side who had not won a World Cup qualifier on home soil since 1972.

Who would have thought BBC Sport NI would soon be talking about "a new low" for the side?

Over 1,000 Northern Ireland fans travelled to watch their side's 3-2 defeat in 2013

While Northern Ireland's skipper on the night, and their most capped player of all time, Steven Davis remembers a performance where "not very much of it was good", the odds of an unlikely upset had lengthened further when Martin Paterson fired the visitors into a 14th-minute lead.

Aurelien Joachim cancelled out that goal before half-time however and Stefano Bensi put Luxembourg, who had previously won only four World Cup qualifiers, into a shock lead.

Gareth McAuley appeared to salvage a face-saving draw with a late header, but Mathias Janisch struck three minutes from time to leave O'Neill reflecting on an "unacceptable" performance.

The manager went on to call his side's game management "pathetic", while local newspapers were even less kind, labelling the result against the part-timers ranked 140th in the world as the worst in the country's history.

And yet, nine of O'Neill's starting XI that night, along with five members of his bench, were part of the 23-man squad when Northern Ireland headed to Euro 2016 less than three years later.

"Sometimes when you hit rock bottom, there's only one place to go and that's to come back from it," said McAuley when asked about the dramatic turnaround.

Even if hindsight shows how rash a decision it would have been, there were questions over O'Neill's future after the result.

McAuley, whose goal against Ukraine in Lyon later gave Northern Ireland their first ever win at a European Championships, says such doubts never permeated into the senior playing group.

"It's one of them things, there was probably a real transitional stage. There was the old guard and then there was new players coming in and Michael was coming in," said the former West Bromwich Albion centre-back.

"It's difficult really for an international manager when you think of how many actual training sessions you get, building relationships with players, getting your points across. These things do take time.

"But Michael had a way that he wanted to do things, and we could see that, we were behind it. It just got there, it just clicked. There were so many factors around it, but the belief that we had in what we were being asked to do was what really galvanised us to move that forward."

Gareth McAuley's 82nd-minute header had levelled the score at 2-2

There was certainly no immediate uptick in fortunes. Northern Ireland did not win any of their next six fixtures which included a defeat by Azerbaijan and a draw with Cyprus.

Davis, though, thinks the lessons learned were instrumental in the feats that followed.

"It was a disappointing result, a disappointing night for us, but I think we learnt a lot from it," said Davis.

"In the aftermath obviously at the time a lot of emotions were running high, but once you step away from it, I think we became much better at dealing with these fixtures."

By the time the next qualifying campaign rolled around, Northern Ireland got off to a flier with a 2-1 win away to Hungary and did not look back.

Few of the 1,200 fans in Luxembourg would have believed it on that chastening night but five more wins, three draws and just one defeat later, O'Neill had guided the side to their first major tournament in three decades.

"I think it was very much getting off to a good start in the group, then that gives you the belief and it all begins to snowball," says former Aston Villa midfielder Davis of the rapid reversal.

"Momentum in football is massive. I think that was really important for us as a group.

"We just had a real mentality to go and try and achieve something."

Michael O'Neill called his side's performance "unacceptable" after the defeat

Northern Ireland are back in Luxembourg on Thursday evening for what will be a fifth meeting between the sides since that infamous night 12 years ago. The previous four have yielded three wins and a draw.

The playing squad for what will mark the start of the side's 2026 World Cup qualifying campaign shows no survivors from the 2013 defeat, while Luxembourg are a vastly different proposition too.

The hosts are now some 42 places higher in the Fifa world rankings than they were going into that 3-2 victory, while Northern Ireland's most recent visit, a Nations League fixture in November, finished in a 2-2 draw.

After five wins and three draws from 10 Euro 2024 qualifiers, and a friendly victory over Sweden as recently as March, Luxembourg's days being viewed as Europe's pushovers are no more.

"Luxembourg have developed a lot in the last number of years," said O'Neill.

"They've got a number of players who play their club football at a good level in good leagues in Europe, so it's a tough game."

Complacency here, as O'Neill knows all too well, would certainly be misplaced.