Slovakia 1-0 Northern Ireland: Referee had to ‘be stronger’, says beaten manager Michael O’Neill

However, the loss in the penultimate match of the campaign still damages their hopes of reaching North America as they will go into those play-offs in the lowest group of seeds.

Slovakia initially thought they had taken the lead in the 56th minute when Lukas Haraslin’s free-kick flew past Bailey Peacock-Farrell, but Milan Skriniar was judged to have obstructed the Northern Ireland goalkeeper’s view.

Just eight minutes later, another goal was disallowed by VAR after David Strelec was penalized for handling the ball while finishing from another Haraslin set-piece.

O’Neill believed that the decisions to exclude the earlier attempts contributed to the late winner being admitted.

“It was a clear push on Daniel Ballard on the corner, with both hands behind his back,” O’Neill said.

“The other disallowed goals should have been disallowed. The first was offside, which is clearly visible from the lines, and the second was handball.”

“You have to look at each incident on its own merits. You can’t go cumulative and judge the last incident differently than how you judged the other two incidents.”

After the winning goal, Ballard was sent off for a second yellow card offense and midfielder George Saville was shown a yellow card, with both players now ruled out of Monday night’s match against Luxembourg due to suspension.

Of Ballard’s second yellow, O’Neill said: “It was the Slovakian dugout that mainly caused that.”

“The [second] A yellow card for Daniel is a joke,” he continued.

“If you look back, it is mediocre. He is a top referee, he refereed the Champions League final, he should have disallowed the goal.”

The win, which keeps Slovakia’s hopes of automatically qualifying for next summer’s tournament alive, sparked huge celebrations from the hosts, with O’Neill describing their reaction as “disappointing”.

“Everything was on the line for Slovakia. You could see that in the way their technical area behaved towards the end of the match, which was disappointing.

“Disappointing that the coach didn’t shake my hand.

“In the end we congratulate Slovakia for being able to go to Germany and try to win the group.”