Lost in translation: A saga that didn’t work out

The earliest clue that there might be quite a bit lost in translation in the Giovanni Trapattoni era came in the Algarve in May 2008 when he took the squad there for a week-long training camp soon after taking over as Republic of Ireland manager.

After one session, during which his players watched in wonder as he exercised super-strenuously on a mat, extending his legs heavenwards, looking for all the world like Stretch Armstrong, he had a chat with the local media, for whom he was still something of a celebrity after his spell with Benfica.

While listening in on one interview with a television reporter, the visiting Irish tried to figure out what language the manager was speaking, because it was not one with which they were familiar.

It was, the reporter told us, a unique blend of Italian, German and Portuguese, with the odd English word thrown in, spoken at a dazzling speed, accompanied by windmill-ish arms flailing about the place in an exceedingly passionate fashion.

Eh, comprehensible?

“Hmmmm,” was the reply. Bits, just. She wished us good luck, sincerely, and departed.

Her good wishes came to mind some time later when, during a press conference in England, Trapattoni was asked about the nature of an injury Shay Given had suffered. He stood up from his seat, slapped his bottom, and said: “You know, yes?”

We had no clue.

Trickiest mission
Those assigned the task of covering Trapattoni's post-night-match press conferences had the trickiest mission of all, tight deadlines not allowing time for the usual huddle where all concerned tried to agree on what he'd actually said – or tried/meant to say.

There was always the possibility, then, that you’d have two papers next day with headlines like (1) “Trap: Robbie A National Treasure!” and (2) “Trap: Robbie A National Disgrace!”

Your typical email exchange after, say, a quick word from the manager after training.

Reporter 1: “Did he say Simon Cox is our Messi?”

Reporter 2: “Huh? Thought he said our messer?”

Reporter 1: “Really? You sure?”

Reporter 2: “No. Which one are you going with?”

Reporter 1: “Messy Messi?”

Reporter 2: “Grand, that’ll do.”

Reporter 1: “Cheers.”

There’d oft follow heated arguments along the lines of “well, how’s your Italian, you monolingual moaner?”, the reply usually something like: “But I’m not flippin’ paid €1.5 million a year to give players instructions!”

Which was true, to be honest.

What wasn't entirely true was what Trapattoni once told Italian paper La Repubblica: "A sociologist has told me that I don't speak any language, but that I make myself understood in all of them."

Now, the people were unlikely to take to the streets to protest over reporters’ struggling to figure out what the manager was going on about, that difficulty, sadly, not high on the list of national concerns, but all the time you couldn’t but wonder: Cripes, how on earth does he communicate with his players?

He had help, of course, not least from translator Manuela Spinelli, and Liam Brady too when he was involved in the set-up. But from day one, and it never seemed to get much better, he seemed an isolated figure, trapped, so to speak, by his inability to communicate. And you knew he had plenty to say.

You’d watch him on the sideline during games, when he was nigh on spontaneously combusting with frustration, literally not having the words to advise his players on a more sensible course of action.

That’s not to say if he’d had the words they’d always have been the wisest of ones, after all, his team selections often causing a national outbreak of head-scratching, as did his substitutions at times. But it might have helped.

So, when Marc Wilson conceded this week that the manager’s instructions were “coming across as clear as we can make out”, you half knew his time was up.

Trapattoni’s, not Wilson’s.

Until then, the players had, largely, held their whist, the most common response when you asked them how the communications were going: "Ah, grand, yeah – ah yeah." Which translated as "a nightmare, like". But players become emboldened when a manager is on the ropes, and that's pretty much where Trapattoni has been since Euro 2012, the 1-6 at home to Germany almost the knockout.

Different galaxy
It's a shame, he came with a CV that would blind you. AC Milan, Juventus, Inter Milan, Juventus, Bayern Munich, Cagliari, Bayern Munich, Fiorentina, Italy, Benfica, Stuttgart and Red Bull Salzburg. With a title or 90 thrown in.

“Trapattoni is from a different galaxy to Venables – it’s like comparing Abraham Lincoln to George W Bush,” said Eamon Dunphy when there was talk of Tel being the main rival for the job. Hands up how many remembered that? Nope. Same here.

“The greatest day in the history of Irish football,” Dunphy declared when Trap fought off Tel for the job, and his fellow RTÉ panellists couldn’t disagree.

We were faced, then, with a monotonous consensus, with divil a sign of aggro, but you know yourself, it soured a little after that. Apart from qualification for Euro 2012, the highlights of the Trapattoni era were probably those times Dunphy and Brady had to be peeled off each other, as they begged to differ on how the manager was faring. John Giles mainly in the middle, pleading “ah lads”. Good craic.

But it never quite worked, sparkling CV he might have had, but you got the sense from Day One that he felt we were just blessed to have him, often a bit quick to suggest it was the players who had failed, and not him. True at times, certainly, but that class of stuff needed to be said – through a translator, if needs be – behind closed doors, not in public.

The ego, then, didn’t help, that CV was sparkling, but his determination to protect his reputation was often done at the cost of his players’ morale. It wasn’t, say, Keith Andrews’s fault he was no Liam Brady, but his manager should at least have tried to make him feel like he was.

Trap Time over. Much of the era hopelessly lost in translation. A pity. A good man, with a pedigree like few others. It just didn’t work out.