Stephen Kenny says his side will be underdogs going into Wednesday's second leg of their play-off tie with Istanbul Basaksehir, but the St Patrick's Athletic manager says his side's impressive draw with the Turks will give his players belief.
On a miserably wet night at Tallaght Stadium, it was the SSE Airtricity League outfit who looked more like scoring as they took the game to a side who were playing Champions League soccer just four years ago.
Mason Melia flashed an early header wide, while Kian Leavy was desperately unlucky to see his strike come back off the post after the break.
The visitors, featuring a side with Ghanaian, Greek and Turkish internationals, took 20 minutes to really settle into the game, and even then they rarely threatened Joseph Anang's goal on an impressive night for the Saints.
"We're disappointed not to have won it," Kenny said afterwards.
"But obviously they're a high quality team with some tremendous players. I thought my players were brilliant we're pleased with our display overall.
"We'd a high risk strategy, pushing our full-backs right on their wingers, and we absolutely matched them all over the park - we were utterly dominant in that period [the first half].
"Even though they have so many high calibre players, I don't really feel we conceded a chance on goal, of note.
"Kian Leavy's effort is just outstanding. [He] beat two players and cracked it off the inside of the post.
"The early chances with Mason and Jake [Mulraney] were close. There wasn't loads of clear cut chances in the game but it was utterly compelling tactically.
"We had to match them all over the park and we would have liked to win to take a lead over to Turkey."
It's a quick turnaround now for Pat's, who face Kenny's old club Dundalk on Sunday afternoon (3pm) before heading out to Turkey for the second leg on Wednesday for an early evening kick off at 5pm.
Despite the impressive showing, and the commendable draw, Kenny says his players will need to come up with a massive performance over there if they're to qualify for the group stages.
"They probably view it overall as a good result," Kenny added.
"They'll be strong favourites in Istanbul because they're at home but ironically it's not a 'welcome to hell' cauldron, 50,000 [fans] - they only get 5,000 at their matches.
"They have a fantastic stadium but the attendances are not on a par with all of the other teams. They've won that league, and it shows you what can happen - they've won it against all those great clubs.
"I've said to the players, 'you're not going into a cauldron - the crowd won't be any bigger than it was tonight.' We'll have no fears.
"We're still very much in the tie going to Istanbul for Wednesday's game."
Defender Tom Grivosti echoed his manager's views, adding that they're going to Turkey to finish off the job.
"Over the course of the 90 minutes we definitely created the better chances. Kian Leavy is so unlucky hitting the post and we've kept them to few chances.
"It's a little bit disappointing because we had such a good start, like we did hear two weeks ago [against Sabah].
"After the first leg we left a few goals behind us going to Azerbaijan, and we've got that similar feeling. We went over there and won, so hopefully we can do that again.
"We believe we can go over there and get a result."
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