Time for Trap’s critics to live in the real world
By James Lawton
Friday April 03 2009
It is hard not to be amused, in a melancholy sort of way, listening to some of the revisionist theorising on the wisdom of appointing Giovanni Trapattoni.
Too old, too conservative, too unwilling to nurture and cajole the potential world-beaters Stephen Ireland, Andy Reid and Lee Carsley are some of the charges against the man who comes out of the most tricky stage, so far, of his unlikely ambition to carry his, how can we put it, workman-like team into the World Cup finals just two points behind the reigning champions Italy.
It is true, of course, that Italy were reduced to 10 men for most of the 1-1 draw in Bari, but which country in all of world football is better equipped to make a virtue rather than a killing handicap of such a numerical disadvantage? Upon leaving the cradle, Italian boys are confronted by the catechism and the challenge of learning to close down space, and not generally in that order.
Crisis
For nearly 90 minutes, Italy did not face a crisis so much as a call to their true vocation.
In this historically generated light, it was surely no wonder that Trapattoni scarcely concealed his exhilaration after the late Robbie Keane equaliser which kept the fantasy of automatic qualification on the table. Fantasy? How else is it possible to describe his challenge after even the most casual examination of the resources at Ireland's disposal?
Listening to some of his critics discuss all the fine nuances of selection facing Trapattoni, it is hard not to wonder from which planet they have travelled.
Do they really expect a man of Trapattoni's experience and achievements to surrender career-long values to the alter of Stephen Ireland's whim? Would you want to build your team around talent so eccentrically and selfishly housed? Would you want to go to the tightest of corners with nearly half a planeload of self-absorption? Or would you want to compromise your belief in what is valuable in the dynamic of a team for the sake of a player of Reid's largely unproven ability to inflict his gifts at the highest level? Let's face it, the obligation here is to make at least a little contact with reality.
Neither Reid nor Ireland is Wayne Rooney, the player whose less endearing qualities are being tolerated by Trapattoni's Italian compatriot Fabio Capello because of some profoundly impressive talent -- and a competitive spirit which blazed from him as a teenager threatening, before injury, to dominate the European championships of 2004.
So here, clearly, is a balancing of options, a team of enhanced discipline but one denied the often luminous presence of outstanding talent. For Trapattoni, there is no such dilemma.
He doesn't have much after he discounts the talent of Ireland and Reid, but he has something that is now too rich to squander -- a real sense of achievement every time you look at the qualification table.
There was more bleak, if unconscious, humour in the assertion of former national coach Brian Kerr yesterday that Trapattoni's campaign has been marked by good luck.
Let's hope such thinking doesn't permeate too much of a debate already festooned with outrageous examples of woolly thinking. If Old Trap is branded a lucky coach of Ireland, how do we re-visit the achievements of Jack Charlton?
The big man was also resolute in his thinking about how a team should be run but his approach was not exactly undermined by the quality of players at his disposal; any coach who could put the sublime quality of, say, Liam Brady in the take-it-or-leave-it category is operating among riches beyond the dreams of the current incumbent.
Cast your mind back through Big Jack's force and you see a range of talent into which only the supreme examples of Irish talent from earlier generations could have made guaranteed impact.
Kerr himself was not exactly untouched by good fortune when he discovered it suited Roy Keane's purpose to pull on the green shirt again. For Trapattoni, a Roy Keane, even operating on one leg, would have been not so much an asset as a treasure.
As it is, his leadership is supplied by another Keane, one whose persistence was valuable in Bari -- where Italy had won all their previous internationals -- but who in terms of competitive savvy has never begun to tread the same ground as his combustible namesake.
But, because he is an old pro, because he has standards hammered out in so many years of high-level campaigning, Trapattoni knows the ultimate obligation of his job. It is to make the best of what he has as he goes along, and certainly there is no inclination to accept the passivity that so often accompanies advancing years.
When the Italians went a man down, he swiftly adjusted his team, yanking off Andy Keogh and replacing him with Caleb Folan. It was not, with all due respect, the swapping of diamonds, but something the old man decided had to be done for a new balance in a new situation and not the least satisfaction of his homecoming, surely, was the fact that the substitute played vigorously and played a part in the Keane goal which could yet come to be weighed in gold.
Interestingly, we saw in Italy a welcome, not for an ageing son of Il Calcio, but a man due great honour for all that he represented. Trapattoni, apparently, was pleased by the evidence that respect for him had not dwindled in his absence. Certainly it must have made an agreeable change from the barbs so frequently fired off in his latest theatre of action.
Old Trap could tell himself, after all, that something is known about football in the native land where he rose so high. There, they know for sure the most fundamental ingredient of a winning football team. It is a shared commitment and a common goal, one that was achieved against more formidable talent as recently as the last World Cup.
It is something Trapattoni's Irish jury might wish to consider, just as soon as they beam themselves back to Planet Earth.