LIAM Millar has insisted the penalty shoot-out defeat to Hibernian in the Betfred Cup quarter-final at Rugby Park on Wednesday night won’t derail Kilmarnock’s revival under Angelo Alessio, writes Matthew Lindsay.
And the Liverpool loanee has expressed hope the painful experience can help him to fire Canada to the 2022 World Cup finals in Qatar in future.
Millar buried his spot kick confidently to put the Ayrshire club 3-2 ahead, but his team mates Stephen O’Donnell and Niko Hamalainen then failed to convert theirs.
But the last eight match was the fourth in a row at Rugby Park that Alessio’s team has kept a clean sheet at home – the score in the cup tie was 0-0 after 120 minutes.
READ MORE: Hibernian keeper Chris Maxwell open to possibility of switching allegiances from Wales to Scotland
The former Juventus, Chelsea and Italy assistant endured a difficult start to his time in Scotland; his team was knocked out of the Europa League by Welsh minnows Connah’s Quay Nomads and then lost their opening two Ladbrokes Premiership games.
However, Millar, who is hoping to start in the league meeting with Ross County at home tomorrow, still feels Kilmarnock are moving in the right direction together.
“It was disappointing,” he said. “It is the worst way to lose a match on penalties. That is the cruelty of football sometimes. We have had 120 minutes to win the game and penalties are 50/50 and you never know who is going to be successful. Unfortunately for us our luck was out.
“But we are getting better and better every game, we are starting to pass the ball around a lot more and we are gaining in confidence. It is all very positive and we need to keep going.”
Millar, who was born in Toronto and brought up in Ontario as a boy before moving to England as a teenager, made his debut for Canada last year.
The 19-year-old is hoping to help his national team make it through to their only their second World Cup finals in the coming seasons and reckons being part of the penalty shoot-out will prove invaluable.
“That was my first experience of a penalty shoot-out ever in my professional career,” he said. “It was nice to take a penalty and to score and get into that mindset and environment.
“We have got World Cup qualifiers with Canada in the future and you never know what is going to happen so that might stand me in good stead.
“You never want to lose a game on penalties, but that is football.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here