Keeping the Trap door open
His demeanour towards outsiders is surly, sometimes to the point of rudeness.
One colleague compared his interview style with that adopted by Republican prisoners under interrogation — “just pick a spot on the wall and say nothing.”
I remember watching Gibson come off the training ground in Montecatini, staring intently at his mobile phone. Judging by his exaggerated, stagey facial expressions as he approached the mixed zone, he was reading the most fascinating series of text messages anyone had ever been lucky enough to receive. The acting wasn’t great but the message was clear: don’t even bother asking me to stop.
Nobody did and a lot of journalists no longer do, which is presumably what Gibson always wanted.
His off-field reticence has been mirrored in some of his displays for Ireland on the pitch, where maybe the best way to put it is that he has thus far failed to make himself indispensable. Games have often passed him by and Giovanni Trapattoni is forever demanding he show more “personality”.
Gibson showed a bit of personality this weekend when announcing his surprise withdrawal from the Republic of Ireland squad. Since there was no statement coming directly from the Gibson camp, all we had to go on was a quote from Trapattoni via the FAI, saying the player “doesn’t feel ready to return to the squad for this fixture after the disappointment of Euro 2012”.
Everyone was disappointed with Euro 2012 but most of us have since managed to pick ourselves up and carry on with our lives. Nobody whose reaction to disappointment was to curl up in a ball and mope for weeks would have reached the level Gibson has as a professional sportsman. It seems reasonable to speculate that there was a fair amount of anger and disillusionment mixed in with the disappointment Trapattoni mentioned.
Some people think it is such an honour to be asked to play for your country and that squad players should be happy to spend weeks away from their families flying all over Europe, even if all they do is sit on the bench. That is not how most professional footballers look at it. It’s bad enough to be a substitute when the guy ahead of you is playing well, so imagine how it feels when the first team is getting thrashed in match after match and you still don’t get a chance.
Gibson, like Stephen Hunt, Darren O’Dea, Stephen Kelly and Paul McShane, did not play a minute at Euro 2012. After living and training with the squad for nearly five weeks, he had to sit and watch players like Paul Green and Simon Cox getting games in midfield ahead of him. The worst moment for the bench fillers was probably when they realised that Trapattoni wasn’t even going to throw them a bone by picking them in the meaningless third game because he didn’t want to be accused of giving Italy an easy route into the knockout phase.
By the end of it, Gibson’s usual habit of saying nothing to the media was probably a blessing. Stephen Hunt, who usually does speak to the media after games, also dodged the mixed zone after the Italy match, possibly because he didn’t trust himself not to say something he might later regret. The fact was they didn’t need to speak, how they felt was plain for everybody to see.
Gibson’s reluctance to again put himself at the disposal of a regime that doesn’t seem to value him is at least understandable, even if many fans will not approve.
But there are a couple of curious aspects to this. The first is that with Keith Andrews suspended, and James McCarthy still critically short of experience in Trapattoni’s eyes even though he’s played nearly twice as many Premier League games as Gibson, Gibson was more likely to start a key game for Ireland than he’s ever been. This must be as obvious to him as to everyone else, so the fact that he still doesn’t want to be involved perhaps gives us an indication of just how angry he was in the summer.
The second curiosity was how conciliatory Trapattoni’s statement on Gibson sounded: “(He) is very much in my plans and I consider him to be a key player for Ireland... I hope Darron will take this time to reflect positively on his international career, and return to us...”
In the past Trapattoni has come down hard on players he felt weren’t showing the right kind of commitment. Players like James McCarthy and Marc Wilson who withdrew from squads for reasons Trapattoni didn’t take seriously found themselves left off the list for the next one. In the last couple of months that seems to have changed.
Wilson missed the Serbia match with “prodromal symptoms of a viral infection” — basically, there were signs that he might be about to come down with something.
Trapattoni’s scorn for that excuse was plain at his Thursday press conference after the match. Yet when the squad was named for Kazakhstan, Wilson was included.
Now Gibson pulls out, citing “disappointment”, and instead of briskly moving on as of old, Trapattoni soothes him with talk of what a key player he is and how he can’t wait for him to come back.
It seems like we have a new, caring, forgiving Trap, but we know it is unlikely he had a personality transformation over the summer. Perhaps Trapattoni is no longer quite as sure of his position as before, and feels less confident about playing hardball with the players. It remains to be seen whether others will follow Gibson’s lead in letting their disillusionment show.
