UNDETERRED BY the manner in which his side was dismantled by Brazil during the second half of Tuesday night’s friendly at the Emirates in London, Giovanni Trapattoni yesterday lamented his inability to line up a game with another of the contenders for this year’s World Cup, England, despite his good relationship with Fabio Capello.

The managers have spoken regularly in recent times – they sat together at the recent Premier League game between Fulham and Birmingham, while England also trained in St Alban’s on Monday.

Capello subsequently called into the Republic of Ireland team hotel that evening and Trapattoni said he had brought up the possibility of a friendly.

“I spoke with Capello about it,” said Trapattoni yesterday. “I looked for him and told him we wished for a game. But England have many other agreements. I talked with him maybe two or three times and,” he continued with a grin, “I think they are afraid!

“Well, maybe not, but I was with him last Sunday and I said ‘when will we play this game?’ but he said he already had many other games.”

The two countries have not met since the abandoned friendly of March 1995 at Lansdowne Road and the FAI would relish the chance of a big pay day as they move into the Aviva Stadium.

The association have Argentina lined up to visit Dublin in August to mark part of the stadium’s official opening but November 17th is also set aside in the Fifa calendar for friendly international games, while there are two dates in June of next year and bringing commercially attractive opponents like England will be essential if the association is to cope with its ongoing financial commitments.

In the absence of a match with the English, Ireland’s diary is not exactly packed out with lucrative looking ties. The team’s fixtures for the coming European Championship campaign will be agreed at a meeting in Moscow on Tuesday week, while England’s will be set out the previous day in Switzerland.

In the meantime, Ireland’s next outings will be against Paraguay and Algeria at the RDS, with the only other ties pinned down this stage being the new Four Nations tournament that includes Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland which is pencilled in to start in February 2011.

Trapattoni acknowledged the blend of opposition is not ideal, with no European opposition having been booked to test his side prior to the resumption of competition action in September but, he said, the problem was there is more to consider than simply who he would like to play.

“Sometimes, the games are agreed a long way in advance, we agree to play many games a long way ahead.

“In Italy, we usually agreed to play only one or two games at a time, and we also had more possibilities to choose from.

“In the future, we might try to play one African team, one from South America and one from somewhere else but friendly games are also a little bit about business and we cannot control all of this.”

Next up for the squad will be the training camp away, although Trapattoni was unsure where. Asked if it would be Portugal again, he was vague about the possibilities. “We will have time like we did in Portugal the first time,” he said, “but maybe in another country . . . maybe Corsica or Sardinia.”

The Italian seemed to be picking examples at random and subsequently suggested the choice would most likely come down to where the most economically attractive offers might come from.

“Normally, when we look at situations like this, somebody hosts us. They invite us, it’s not expensive because we play a friendly game so we don’t spend the money.

“The young players will get the chance to stay with us, to improve. We can’t change too quickly, I couldn’t change three, four, five last night. The young players need structure around them.

“So, in May, we will have time to do something. It will be possible to achieve more then. Some will have been playing a lot with their clubs but others can come with us,” he said before mentioning the likes of Keith Treacy, Liam Lawrence, James McCarthy, Shane Long, Anthony Stokes, Greg Cunningham and Séamus Coleman as being amongst those likely to be invited to make the trip.

The Italian made it clear again he would not be distracted from his work with Ireland by any short-term deals to manage another country at the World Cup this summer.

“If I wanted to coach a team that is going to the World Cup, I could have more than one choice but it wasn’t right for me so I refused,” he said. “It would have been right with Ireland and given our performances we could have gone. But to go with Ivory Coast or South Africa would not have been right for me.”