GIOVANNI TRAPATTONI entertained the massed media in Bari last night. This week, punctuated as it will be by tonight’s vital World Cup game between Italy and Ireland, is really about a sort of homecoming for the most successful manager in Italian club history.
The Italian media haven’t seen Il Trap since they rode him out of town on a donkey following failures at successive big tournaments. Trap presided over some of the worst humiliations the Italian national team have suffered, so it should at best have been bitter-sweet this return to the motherland.
Lo! Everything is forgiven. So far this homecoming is sweet enough to give you tooth decay.
The Italians applauded Trapattoni into the press conference room at the Stadia San Nicola yesterday evening and fought tooth and nail with their Irish colleagues for the right to lovingly fondle the old soccer man with the warm balm of gentle questions.
For his part, Giovanni played us like a virtuoso absent-mindedly tuning up. Little shards of sagacity and barbs of wit. Some maxims to live by. No details whatsoever about tonight’s football.
The Italian media, a member of which once summed up Trapattoni’s philosophy of football as “inbred, maddening, bloody defensive tactics”, delighted in every word. Trapattoni spoke two languages throughout but conversed on two levels also, one level for the Irish tuning into the occasional translations which he permitted, the other to the Italians with whom he has a longer and more fraught history of engagement.
He spoke of the Bible, the big David v Goliath upset. Of faith. Italy have never lost in Bari but Trap, excusing himself as “a believer”, declined to comment on that. He spoke of Life. Change. Show-business. He gave a big shout out to a sick colleague.
Not so much about the football, though. We discovered talented winger Aiden McGeady (or Edd n’ McGeddy, as Trap calls him) will be unable to play tonight having sustained an injury in Saturday’s draw with Bulgaria.
Otherwise the team is expected to be the same as that which slumped to that stalemate in Croke Park four days ago.
Unless either side breaks the principle which has ruled all exchanges in Group Eight from the outset (all games are to be played out as dull dramas between two poor sides having off-nights), the Italians should win a poor game by a margin which will be dictated by their appetite.
Anything other than honourable defeat will be a bonus to Ireland, although Robbie Keane, the team captain, was at pains to stress our history yesterday.
“Yes, in the past we have played so-called superior teams and we have got results away from home. To come here and do that to the world champions would surpass those results, but we believe in ourselves. We haven’t come to lie down and die.”
Which was good news for the several thousand Irish fans who have made the journey, travelling against the winds of recession and low expectation to lend their support. The game kicks of at 7:50pm Irish time and Ireland need at least a draw to retain hope of automatically qualifying for next summer’s World Cup in South Africa. In truth, that tournament probably needs Giovanni Trapattoni and his press conferences more than it needs Ireland and our dull play.
Where did the rugby boys vanish to?
