TONE DEAF DOWN RABBIT HOLE...
Like a tree in a storm, Trap bends enough to survive His press briefings should get Arts Council funding
ROBBIE KEANE’S cousin was at the match last night. Robbie Keane’s cousin, you know the one? The man who slagged off Thatcher; who wrote
Irish Blood English Heart, who said during a concert i n Manchester a few years ago that he was ‘nine parts Crumlin and nine parts Old Trafford’.
Morrissey might be famous as an oddball and a curmudgeon, but he knows how to keep the land of his fathers’ sweet.
Morrissey has enough Irish in him to know what makes the natives purr.
Giovanni Trapattoni has no family ties to Ireland, and he has no interest in playing the game, either. He doesn’t throw out compliments like fish-bait, as recently as Monday taking the opportunity to tell the Irish public that there is damn-all creativity available to him so, as a consequence, he builds a side with practicality the aim.
You don’t fret about the colour scheme when putting together a bomb shelter.
If there was to be a lyric of Steven Patrick Morrissey’s that appealed to him — and it is almost certain that there isn’t — it might be this one from Heaven Knows I’m Miserable
Now: ‘In my life / Why do I smile / At people who I’d much rather kick in the eye?’
Trapattoni has a certainty about him that could result from his years on this planet, or his great and extensive achievements in soccer, or it could just be the result of a headstrong personality. He bends just enough to survive, like a tree in a storm.
He can now talk about how changed the team is from the side that belched black smoke at the Euros, but his words before this game betrayed his thinking. New players, same deficiencies.
‘We have never had many creative players in the team since I took the job and when I took it I watched the previous 20 games on DVD and I don’t remember too many shows,’ he said on Monday.
He will find something in the last-minute concession of an equaliser to convince him he was right to be distrustful of flighty ambitions with this group but in the first half, when they played and stayed off the ropes, they were the better team.
It was when they played as the manager expected that the problems started.
There i s an established ritual with Trapattoni and controversial decisions now: there is a demand from the media for one course of action, the manager chooses another, there i s controversy, and t hen t here is a press conference that involves pointing, shouting and a good deal of incomprehension.
It almost qualifies for Arts Council funding at this stage as a piece of public theatre.
Trapattoni is long enough in management, in this country and others, to know that the story changes and players become causes for a while.
Yet, every time it draws a frenzied response from the manager: Andy Reid, Stephen Ireland, the Jameses — McClean and McCarthy — Wes Hoolahan, Marc Wilson.
It is the same with questions about his alleged tactical rigidity: 4-4-2 is not fit for purpose in the modern game, he is told. But what else can I do, he wails back?
Trapattoni has seen his job in Ireland as making the best of a limited lot.
Suddenly, though, he is putting out teams that are sneaking results but also producing performances that must make the manager reappraise his playing staff.
The performance last night had i ts cruder elements, and the second-half retreat contributed to an uncertain fate.
However, Irel and live until autumn. Trapattoni spoke about the need to win last night but surviving, just about surviving, will keep faint hopes flickering and the manager animated for another six months.
Ireland played some decent ball in spots last night.
They created chances in the first half, with McClean and McCarthy, in particular, smart and mobile, and Jonathan Walters bustling and busy. The defence would struggle to receive a triple-A rating but the industry the manager demands as a must has been leavened with a fair degree of wit over the past five days.
When Walters scored a penalty to equalise Martin Harnik’s goal, Trapattoni smoothed his hair like a man preparing to enter the bank and meet the manager, as Marco Tardelli and Alan Kelly snapped orders and pointed fingers.
Perhaps the manager has been cautious i n his deployment of creative players like McCarthy, McClean and Hoolahan because they appear to him incongruous; dreamers in a world of dockers.
He eyes them with the astonishment of Alice meeting characters down the rabbit hole. When Shane Long hit the post with a smart back-heel, making the most of tight space and limited time, it was testament to the willingness and ability of some Irish players to break out of a mechanised system designed to keep mistakes and opposition chances to a minimum.
A fine header by Walters to give Ireland the lead just before halftime found the manager still impassive.
Tardelli approached and the older man humoured him with a hand slap, but duty is the leitmotif of the Trapattoni style. Mistakes and unnecessary deviations make him dance with rage. Goals are part of the duties.
There was a period, as the match entered the f ourth quarter, when Ireland attacked the Austrian goal and won three corners.
Wilson almost helped bundle in a third goal and for a while the pressure on the Irish goal was lifted. For the most part, though, Austria attacked. They did it with no great sass; they are not one of Europe’s mighty teams.
There was a reason you knew mostly none of their players when you looked at the line-up before the game.
They had plenty of ball, though, and t he perished crowd at Lansdowne Road were obliged to ‘ Ooh’ and ‘ Aah’ as shots were blocked or crosses gathered by David Forde.
Some fools managed a boo when Paul Green was introduced, a good display in Sweden not shifting them from their views on a player derided as a Trapattoni favourite because, if limited, he follows orders.
When Alaba smacked in the equaliser, the manager turned away in shock, but Ireland played a dangerous game in the second half and it was eventually shown to be the wrong one.
The manager should now realise that he has players who can do more than survive.
When they played they succeeded; when they hung on they got their fingers stamped on.
The Austrians sang at the end as the Irish left a frozen Lansdowne Road. Robbie Keane’s cousin could not have managed a tune after how this ended.