Ireland will play Israel in their second UEFA Nations League fixture on Sunday night, with the "home" game being played in Bačka Topola, north of Belgrade, in Serbia.

From dramatic press conferences to racism allegations to players dropping out of the games, the Nations League fixtures between Ireland and Israel have gone anything but smoothly.

As a result, there has been mounting pressure on UEFA to do something about it, and so far, not much has been done.

When speaking to Ciara Doherty on The Pat Kenny Show, Off the Ball's Shane Hannon and Ben Smyes discussed the tensions surrounding the second fixture.

Mr Smyes is in Serbia and described the chaos of the Ireland squad press conference on Saturday, which saw an Israeli reporter call the police.

Mr Smyes added: "The real failing here is that there was no UEFA delegate in the room. Now UEFA have said since that the delegate doesn't need to be in the room, but for a fixture like this, when tensions are so high, it's a complete failing upon UEFA."

Considering UEFA has essentially been staying out of the situation, Ciara posed the question of whether or not there was pressure on the European football governing body to step in.

Mr Hannon replied: "Well, UEFA are very proactive when it comes to things like criticising [FIFA President] Gianni Infantino. They have no problem coming out and releasing statements and being very critical and outward.

"And as they said yesterday, we don't have to have a UEFA delegate at these press conferences. It's only an optional thing.

"But if you have a match between two countries that, clearly, there is tension between, there had to be one yesterday.

"I think there's a little bit of burying the head in the sand, even the fact that this game has gone ahead in the first place.

"It's been past the book from UEFA to FAI, then to the players, and UEFA will have a lot to answer [for], I think, after all of this is done and dusted. It's going to drag on for quite some time."

A question was posed to the Israeli delegation during their press conference in relation to the allegations of the Irish players racially abusing the Israeli players, and they confirmed they had not discussed it with UEFA.

Mr Symes explained: "They [the Israeli squad] gave out that they've been speaking about politics for the last five press conferences and then said that they've confirmed that they have not spoken to UEFA about the allegation from the Israeli journalists earlier saying that Irish players racially abused Israeli players.

"So it's interesting that they actually have not spoken to UEFA themselves. The FAI have started liaising with UEFA around the racial accusations towards Adam Idah from the Israeli fans last week. But Israel, as of now, are not reporting their own stance to UEFA."

Kick off for Ireland v Israel is 7:45pm BST on Sunday 4 October at TSC Arena in Backa Topola, Serbia.

Main image: Ireland football jersey Picture by: Piaras Ó Mídheach/Sportsfile