PARIS: Northern Ireland’s Gareth McAuley scored a heart-breaking own goal to hand British rivals Wales a 1-0 victory in Paris on Saturday that sent them into the Euro 2016 quarter-finals.

In a cagey contest, Michael O’Neill’s Northern Ireland largely succeeded in muzzling Gareth Bale, but the Real Madrid star produced a wicked 75th-minute cross that the hapless McAuley turned into his own net.

The West Bromwich Albion centre-back’s unwitting intervention allowed Wales to reach the last eight, just as they did on their last major tournament appearance at the 1958 World Cup in Sweden.

Chris Coleman’s side, who qualified above old foes England as Group B winners, will play either Belgium or Hungary in Lille on Friday for a place in the semi-finals.

With no former major tournament winners in Wales’s half of the draw, they will advance with belief intact that they can create a sensation.

And in an ironic touch, it was Wales, whose inhabitants voted to leave the European Union in Thursday’s British referendum, who remained in Europe, and Northern Ireland, whose people voted to stay, who departed.

Coleman named the same team that had trounced Russia 3-0 last Monday, but Northern Ireland provided vastly more disciplined opposition, sitting in a low bloc and looking to attack on the break.

It obliged Bale, the tournament’s joint-top scorer, to move out to the right in search of the ball and aside from a mishit shot that flew well wide, he scarcely offered a threat in the first half.

Instead it was Northern Ireland who procured the few sights of goal, Stuart Dallas testing Wayne Hennessey at his near post.

Wales had the ball in the net in the 19th minute, but Aaron Ramsey was clearly offside as he moved in to toe Sam Vokes’s header past Northern Ireland’s redoubtable goalkeeper Michael McGovern.

Published in Dawn, June 26th, 2016