|
Don’t fall into negative trap
By Ronan Early
 THE
problem with Trapattoni is that everyone thinks he’s perfect for
us. Whenever everyone thinks that, usually everyone is wrong; whenever
something seems too good to be true, it invariably is.
Ok, he’s lost more Championship medals down the back of his sofa
than the average 1980s Liverpool player has won but does that necessarily
mean he’s going to make Ireland a good team? I’m not so sure.
I pray and pray again this is one of the many times I’m wrong but
thinking about it, certain things don’t add up.
First of all, the most coveted managers in Europe don’t practice
their trade in Austria, nor do they coach teams with Red Bull or any other
liquid stimulant as part of their title. It just doesn’t happen.
Were Trap really the A-lister we’re being assured he is, how come
Barcelona, Madrid, Milan, even London aren’t where he’s leaving
this May?
We’re not so naïve to think we’re in a position to lure
a coach from a top Champions League outfit but that is where the market
dictates the top guys are working, so don’t try and sell Trap as
pretty much the best there is.
My biggest concern, though, is the 68-year-old’s preferred method
of playing the game: With no less than 10 men behind the ball at most
times. Even if this works for us, which I’m not convinced it will,
I for one am not enthusiastic about it.
The reason we all started kicking footballs around in infancy was to attack,
to express ourselves, to score goals; to dare to dream. I’ve no
problem with a well-organised defence and a combatitive midfield, but
it has to be as a platform upon which others sprinkle magic; do things
which quicken the heart and make you think you’re not such a mug
for paying 40 quid to see 22 millionaires at work.
Nobody has ever put it better than Danny Blanchflower: “The great
fallacy is that the game is first and last about winning. It is nothing
of the kind. The game is about glory, it is about doing things in style
and with a flourish, about going out and beating the other lot, not waiting
for them to die of boredom.”
With Trapattoni there’s a chance we might win more than we lose,
but where’s the glory in boring Bulgaria to death; grinding out
a 0-0 over there and beating them 1-0 in Croker?
Many will point out that we’ve had this before, to a satisfying
effect: Our most successful time was under Jack Charlton. His brand of
football was about as pretty as Nenagh. Never before or since was the
game more popular at home, even your granny was hanging out of the passenger
seat of a moving Toyota Corolla, trailing a beer-stained tricolour.
At the same time, however, people who actually liked soccer before Euro
’88 were left a little cold at the sight of such gifted players
as Paul McGrath, Ronnie Whelan, David O’Leary and John Aldridge
having to abandon the style with which they played every week, in favour
of hoof, chase, hoof, chase, hoof, chase.
During Big Jack’s tenure, as Roy Keane detailed in his book, good
football was played sometimes, once the team forgot about the primitive
game plan and just did what came naturally: Got it down and passed and
moved.
Granted, Trapattoni will be a lot more tactically evolved than Charlton.
Ball retention will be important but more to the ends of ‘if they
don’t have it they can’t score’.
What Alex Ferguson and Brian Clough and Arsene Wenger always got was that
supporters yearn for a little razzle-dazzle. Instead of imploring fans
to ‘be realistic’, appreciate the fact that ‘it wasn’t
pretty but its three points’ they think differently, logically.
They know fans are being realistic when they clock in at work on Monday
morning, pay off the interest only on their credit card, push a wonky
trolley around Asda, top up their Oyster Card and wonder why the f***
it always had to run out when they are most in a rush.
Fans go to the game and tune in on telly to get away from all of that
for a while. They want to feel like they did when living was easy, when
there was a ball at their feet and a goal to kick towards. Football, as
was pointed out in Nick Hornby’s Fever Pitch, is one of the few
constants in life. It follows you always when almost everything else is,
to differing degrees, transitory.
The Irish team defines us as a tribe more than any other sporting team.
GAA is an in-house passion. Rugby is played and watched by fewer people
in our country and all over the world. Soccer reaches almost everywhere.
Do we as a nation want to be successful, or even unsuccessful, as Italy
lite. Or do we want a team that goes out there and does what the best
Irish people have done at home and abroad for hundreds of years: Worked
hard, worked with passion, worked with ingenuity and sometimes against
staggering odds?
The measure of Trapattoni as an Ireland manager won’t just be results.
If he can get results while playing with a style that has not been evident
in many of his teams so far then he will banish all doubters and prove
himself a manager that the Milans and Barcelona and Madrid should have
signed up first. An A-lister finishing with a flourish. |
