An improving Ireland begin their World Cup Qualifying campaign at the Aviva Stadium in Dublin against a Hungary side tying to reach their first World Cup Finals in 40 years.

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• Ireland are unbeaten in four internationals, their best unbeaten run since 2021-2022.

• Hungary's win over Azerbaijan in their last match brought to an end a run of five matches without a win, in which they suffered relegation from the Nations League A.

• Hungary sit 22 places above Ireland in the FIFA rankings - #38 v #60.

🟢 League of Ireland Ready to Provide Impetus to the National Team?

This season, for the first time in history, the League of Ireland will have two representatives in UEFA league phase competition.

Shamrock Rovers and Shelbourne have both qualified for the Conference League league phase. This is a real boon for the FAI and there is no doubt that there is a real buzz around the game in Ireland right now, especially in domestic football. Now, the national team needs to rekindle that spirit that took them to three World Cups in four tournaments between 1990 and 2002.

Johnny Kenny, who has replaced Troy Parrott in the squad, has played League of Ireland football this season on loan for Shamrock Rovers, so the standard is really close to producing international footballers.

⚪ Hungary to Use Their Qualification Experience to Their Advantage

These four nation groups for World Cup qualification are pretty tough, so it should help Hungary that they have such great recent experience to lean on.

They have qualified for the last three EURO tournaments in a row now, and actually went unbeaten in the qualifiers for the 2024 tournament, winning that qualification group. The issue here is that they actually haven’t reached a World Cup finals since 1986, so they are trying to break that streak.

The vast majority of the squad have that qualification experience in them though, and with a sprinkling of emerging talent, there are two teenagers in the squad, Hungary must believe that they are in prime position to break their World Cup duck.

📊 Ireland v Hungary H2H

The key piece of information in the head-to-head is that these teams played each other in Ireland in a friendly in 2024. Ireland won that match with an injury-time goal from Troy Parrott, a player who has gone from strength-to-strength in his career with AZ Alkmaar since that friendly.

However, when you look into that match, Hungary dominated large portions of it. They had 12 shots to Ireland’s four, albeit Ireland created two big chances and scored both of them. Hungary dominated all of the statistics in the match, outside of the actual scoreline.

Football Predictions at Andy's Bet Club

You can keep up with our Football Betting Tips all weekend, including World Cup 2026 Predictions, Accumulator Tips, and Gem Bets.

We have plenty of coverage for Saturday's World Cup Qualification fixtures, with England v Andorra Betting Tips and an England v Andorra Gem Bet, plus Win Acca Tips, Player Shots On Target Predictions and Armenia v Portugal Predictions.

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* I recommend waiting for confirmed team line-ups before placing any bets.

* All odds displayed correct at the time of publishing.