Jonny Evans: Northern Ireland qualification for Euro 2012 would eclipse any medal won at Manchester United

Premier League ,Jonny Evans,Manchester United(Getty Images)

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Jonny Evans claims it would be a bigger achievement to help Northern Ireland qualify for a major championships rather than win trophies with Manchester United.

The 23-year-old is his country’s main defender while at United he is more of a back up yet he has won an abundance of trophies at his club already. Consequently, the centre-half believes that qualifying will be the biggest achievement of his career.

“I think qualifying for a major tournament with Northern Ireland would sort of eclipse anything I could achieve with Manchester United, unless it was something like the treble, really cleaning up,” Evans told reporters.

“Definitely, it’s a harder task to qualify. I think it’s harder to win the Premier League or the Champions League than it is to qualify for a major tournament with, say England.

“But I do believe it’s harder for us to qualify for a big tournament than it would be for Manchester United to win the Champions League or the Premier League.

“Saying that, I don’t think the lads come here thinking ‘we’ll just turn up’, just look at how hard we work on the pitch.”

Northern Ireland have a crucial qualifier coming up on Thursday against rivals Slovenia, a game which holds more importance because of the way that the Slovenian’s celebrated a victory against them in World Cup 2010 qualification.

Evans added: “When they won the first game at home they were banging on our changing room doors and stuff, it was kind of a weird thing to do.”

“I don’t know why they were banging on the doors but it upset a few of the lads. So when we played them next we got a bit of our own back and definitely a few things were being said on the pitch.

“Hopefully we can go bang on their door again tomorrow.”