Our Perspectives
Great expectations for Trap's army
05 November 2009
Kevin Daly
The Republic of Ireland football team stands on the brink of qualification for the 2010 World Cup finals in South Africa next summer. A playoff game over two legs against France stands between Ireland and their first World Cup Finals appearance since the ill fated trip to the Far East in 2002. Ireland's qualifying record reads: ten qualifying games played, six draws, four wins, with second place in the Group secured, behind defending World Champions Italy. However, despite being one of only five teams out of 53 in the European qualifying section to go through the entire campaign unbeaten and finishing ahead of the second seeds in our group Bulgaria, criticism of the manager and his methods continues unabated. Ireland have gone from ragball rovers to a well organised, well drilled international football team that gets results in a little less than a year, but we're still not happy.
The disastrous Euro 2008 qualifying campaign under the tutelage of Steven Staunton has almost been forgotten by the “footballing public”, a campaign where lest we forget we managed to lose 5-2 to Cyprus. It truly was the lowest ebb Irish football had reached for many, many years with dwindling attendances and supporter apathy at an all time high.
The appointment of Giovanni Trappatoni a little over a year ago changed everything. Here was a man that has done and won it all; Italian, Portugese, Austrian and German league titles, European championships and UEFA cups. It was a brave decision and one that showed the FAI are capable of independent thinking from time to time in that they were prepared to ignore the perceived wisdom of the RTE panel who incredibly backed former Derby and Bradford manager, Paul Jewell for the job. Yes, Paul Jewell. The currently unemployed scouser who almost single handedly brought Derby football club to the brink of ruin. Where would Irish football be now if messrs Giles and Dunphy had got their way?
Yet those very same men have been Trappatoni's harshest critics to date despite the vast improvements in results. John Giles “doesn't believe in systems” while Eamon Dunphy, despite initially calling Trappatoni's appointment “the greatest day in Irish football history” is now so out of touch with reality that he seems to believe the “real football people” are “weeping in the stands with frustration”. Ireland do not play good football to watch but Trappatoni’s Irish team is well organised, hard to beat and a competitive international football team once again. Greece won the 2004 European Championships with exactly the same qualities. Scotland, Wales and to a lesser extent Northern Ireland, would gladly trade their current position for ours.
Everyone has an opinion on the Irish football team however the majority need a serious reality check and quickly. Ireland has three world class players: Shay Given, Robbie Keane and perhaps Richard Dunne. The rest of the players eligible to represent our country are playing for lower ranked Premiership teams or a variety of football league teams. Trappatoni realised this the minute he sized up the players and clearly decided that if he was to get results, he had to mould the team into a system that would get Ireland to the World Cup Finals in South Africa. Everything else was secondary, including to a certain degree, the identity of the players. He wants players that he can trust to do a job and carry out his instructions on the field and if this means sacrificing some to achieve this, then so be it.
Which brings us nicely to the almost incomprehensible Andy Reid “saga”. Seemingly intelligent football pundits and observers argue that Reid's inclusion in the Ireland team would somehow change everything and transform Ireland into Barcelona. This is simply not true and not the way Trappatoni wants his teams to play football. A cursory glance by these so called football experts at Trappatoni’s track record down the years would reveal that he has set up many of his teams from Juventus to Bayern Munich to Italy in a similar way with much more talented players at his disposal. Why would a 70 year old highly successful football manager change the habit of a lifetime to accommodate a player, who when he first set eyes on him was frankly vastly overweight? Any professional athlete that needed to lose the equivalent of 9 bags of sugar in weight does not deserve to be an international footballer any time soon regardless of how well he is currently playing for his club.
However, the fact that the Irish football media has effectively launched a campaign to undermine Trappatoni and reinstate Andy Reid to the squad in the wake of the Stephen Ireland story becoming stale and jaded, is more sinister. Led primarily by Eamon Dunphy and facilitated by the increasingly tired and irrelevant RTE football panel, it is nothing short of ludicrous and has resulted in Dunphy becoming a figure of fun amongst football supporters once again. Does he not realise that Reid played in Ireland's last campaign and was largely ineffective throughout? If Reid is the player the media tells us he is, why did he not lead us to qualification then and why did Tottenham Hotspur only hold on to him for 26 games before quickly realising their mistake and flogging him to Charlton for half their original outlay? That this issue has overshadowed the fact that Ireland have qualified second from a group almost no one gave us a chance of getting out of this time last year really says it all about the Irish football media at present – depressingly similar to the one that reports on the English national team. I shudder to think of the media reaction should Ireland not manage to beat an exceptional France side in the playoff in mid- November. No doubt the campaign to “get Trap out” will kick off in earnest and Andy Reid will, at that stage, be as good a player as Liam Brady, Roy Keane and Pele combined.
Despite the almost unending criticism of his methods, Trappatoni continues to get results, frustrating the media in the process, who seem to want his head on a plate already. A trip to South Africa for the festival of football at the expense of a phenomenally talented French team might be the only way Il Capo can appease the baying masses. Here's hoping.
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