What a difference ten months can make – and especially when they include a dismal experience at the finals of the European Championship.

A friend tells me that he was at a sports function the other night when a minor war of words erupted over someone using the term ‘soccer’.

IT’S probably just as well that Damien Duff isn’t a tearing-his-hair-out kinda guy or else he’d be billiard ball smooth by now.

What’s not to love about Fulham Football Club? There’s the location, location, location for a start.

Ah, beware the kindness of friends… Planning my journey to Paris three years ago for the game which would go down in infamy as the one touched by the ‘Hand Of Gaul’, I cheerfully followed the advice of a colleague and booked into what sounded like a nice, friendly, conveniently located hotel on the left bank of the Seine.

As fellow gaffers are wont to do, Rafa Benitez jumped to Giovanni Trapattoni’s defence this week, saying that to point the finger at the tactics used by the manager in Euro 2012 was misguided.

Pulling up in front of the Fota Island Hotel, Gianfranco Zola hops off a golf buggy, offers a warm handshake and, with it, that familiar beaming smile.

It was Roberto Mancini who called it a “crazy season”, so crazy that, after all the madness which had preceded the dawning of the final day in the Premier League last time around, Alex Ferguson was left with not unreasonable grounds for hoping the noisy neighbours would do “something stupid”, maybe even a “Devon Loch”, at the death.

You have to say this much for Giovanni Trapattoni: life is rarely dull with the old man around.

A last word on Con Houlihan?