Emmet Maloneassesses the state of the national team as they prepare for their first competitive game under the new manager
IN JONATHAN WILSON'S wonderful book on the history of football tactics, Inverting The Pyramid, the name of Giovanni Trapattoni crops up only once, in relation to the European Cup final of 1983 in Athens.
In Italian football, Wilson recalls, it was the time of il gioco all' Italiana. This was a less defensive approach than full blown catenaccio and a system that was so ubiquitous by May 1983 that every player in a side would know who they were expected to mark at the start of a game by glancing at the opposing team's numbers.
For the European final Trapattoni's opposite number, the great Ernst Happel, decided to exploit what he saw as a weakness in the Italian orthodoxy. By switching one Hamburg player - Lars Bastrup - from the left to right, he forced the Italian into a change he would have preferred to avoid.
Juventus's Claudio Gentile followed the Dane and Marco Tardelli was asked help fill the gap left by the defender while also fulfilling his naturally attacking role. In the end, it's argued, he couldn't quite pull it off and Felix McGath raced through the space to score the game's only goal.
A quarter of a century on, Trapattoni has spent months laying the groundwork for his Irish team's tactics this evening. After three friendly games, the Italian will look to field a team shaped by what he perceives as the strengths and weaknesses of his own squad rather than the approach of the opposition. For both the 69-year-old and his employers, there is a good deal riding him getting it right.
After so much club success, this World Cup campaign provides Trapattoni with a second opportunity to enhance his reputation with a national team. Despite a number of extenuating circumstances his time in charge of Italy, during which the country qualified for two major championships but then failed to live up to expectations, is essentially remembered as a disappointment.
Guiding this Irish side to qualification, on the other hand, would be something of a triumph regardless of what happens thereafter.
After the Steve Staunton years, the FAI could certainly do with such a success story. In an effort to put the mistakes of the last manager's regime - theirs as well as his - behind them they have spent heavily on turning the fortunes of the national team around. Positive results tonight and on Wednesday in Podgorica would offer an early return on the investment.
Ireland's only realistic hope of making it to South Africa looks to be by squeezing into second place ahead of Bulgaria and then, with the help of a little luck in the draw one presumes, winning in the play-offs.
It's likely to be a long haul but the timing of these two opening games has had the effect of significantly exaggerating their importance, for the association will later this month launch its 10-year ticket scheme for the newly developed Lansdowne Road and, at the prices they are intending to charge, they could do with the team having a bit of momentum behind it.
IMG subsidiary ISG is overseeing the sales process for the association and they have certainly encouraged their clients to think big, with the prices for best seats set at some €32,000.
Taking the number of home games staged during the last few years before the closure of Lansdowne Road for redevelopment as a guide, it works out at around €500 per match or just over seven times what the best seats put on general sale individually cost at present. And more than half of the 24 games staged between the start of 2003 and the end of 2006 were friendlies while a large portion of the qualifiers were against the likes of the teams Ireland will play over the coming five days.
In the current economic climate, the numbers involved, which are far higher than those charged by the IRFU, have been described as ambitious, a term that doesn't seem overly controversial in the circumstances. If it all comes off for the association it will be quite a financial coup for John Delaney who has been consistently bullish about the organisation's ability to pay for its share of the stadium costs. If it goes badly, though, then the failure is bound to reflect poorly on a chief executive who has, with the help of the association's PR department, devoted considerable amounts of time and energy to his attempt to cultivate an image as both a corporate operator and a champion of the average fan.
Delaney has been keen to associate himself with the new manager but some of the Italian's trips to Ireland for what essentially have been photo opportunities have looked a little ill advised in retrospect after the association was obliged to admit last week that Trapattoni has yet to get along to see a single Irish player in action for his club.
If he is to succeed in his job, though, Trapattoni primarily needs to command and retain the respect and loyalty of those players while they are on international duty, something both of his immediate predecessors struggled to do over the course of their tenure.
His achievements as a player and track record as a manager give him quite a head start, of course, even if his difficulties with the language remain a hindrance.
One of the squad's most thoughtful and articulate players, Dean Kiely provided an impressive endorsement this week of the manager's standing as well as that of his assistants within the group.
"Ah listen," he said, "I said before I was approached to come back that I thought the appointment was first class. Certainly from the point of view of somebody who grew up in my era, someone who was impressionable at the time I was and looking at football. Mr Trapattoni, Marco Tardelli and Liam Brady are people you want to glean knowledge from. You want to listen to what they say, you want to hear how they feel about football, how they think you should do it, what's the way to be successful in football.
"In my case I'm 37 and I've aspirations to play until I'm 40 and then see what happens," he continues. "If I was to stay in the game I think it's only to my benefit to glean information off the top, top people. And all those three people fall into that category. The minute Mr Trapattoni walks into a room to get the squad together, it is jaw-dropping, mouth-open, hanging-on-every-word stuff and certainly from my perspective, for it to transpire that I'm a party to that, it is a big deal."
Other squad members have acknowledged, either publicly or in private, that he can struggle to get his message across but the Italian, insists the West Brom goalkeeper, has a gentle way of coaxing the best out of the players he has available for himself.
Kiely is understandably upbeat about the reservoir of talent within the panel at present but it's pretty clear that Trapattoni has worked with better over the years.
Still, the former Juventus and Italy boss has shown a cool approach to cutting his cloth. His failure to persuade Stephen Ireland to return has left him without the player probably best equipped to add some creative spark to the team's central midfield. But a year after one of his now assistants was criticising Steve Staunton for leaving Andy Reid out of his side, Trapattoni has opted to omit the Sunderland player too while handing a more defensive role to the previously uncapped Glenn Whelan.
The shape of his team, in fact, looks straightforward enough with Whelan and Steven Reid in the centre allowing those either side to provide the bulk of the attacking emphasis. Reid provided a reminder of how much he can contribute in Oslo where he not only repeatedly won possession and used it well but also managed to create a threat at times around the opposition area.
It does not look like a team that is going to score too many goals and the extensive work done by Trapattoni with his players on set pieces reflects the need to generate more of a return from those opportunities. What will prove just as important over the next few days, however, will be how successful he has been in stabilising a defence that looks persistently vulnerable to individual error.
Even if he really can guide this side to the next World Cup, his current job is unlikely to merit more than a footnote for historians of the international game when they come to deal with one of its most successful managers. In Ireland, though, the achievement would surely be viewed, at least on those rare days when the sun comes out, as leaving all his others in the shade.
