Creating the perfect Trap

YOU can say what you like about Giovanni Trapattoni — but you can’t argue with his record as a club manager.

Of current active managers, only Alex Ferguson has won more trophies, although Trap’s 10 league titles, won with five different teams in four different countries, tells its own story.

It is his record as Italy coach, when the Azzurri were knocked out of the 2002 World Cup in the first knockout round by hosts South Korea and then failed to qualify from their Euro 2008 group after drawing with Sweden and Denmark, that might flag up some warning signs for Ireland.

The first thing Trapattoni did when replacing Dino Zoff as Italy coach after Euro 2000 was to give Francesco Totti more responsibility.

“The first time we met he told me, ‘When you are fit you’ll always play in my team’,” Totti recalls.

“In Italy, everybody likes Trap. He is a fighter, a winner, and his career speaks for itself.”

Totti did not repay the faith shown in him, though: conveniently for Italian conspiracy theorists, he had a goal disallowed and was sent off for diving against South Korea.

“After the World Cup exit, we spoke to the coach, and the system of the team changed,” said captain Fabio Cannavaro at the time. “The spirit of the squad has improved and we have turned the pressure on us into a positive thing.”

During the tournament, Italian TV cameras showed Trap throwing a bottle of water onto the pitch, which apparently came from his sister, a nun, and contained holy water. Within minutes of sprinkling the water in the match against Mexico, substitute Alessandro Del Piero scored; when he did it again against South Korea, Italy hit the post.

“I don’t think [holy water] is what brings victory, because then everyone would use it and everyone would win,” he explained.

“But it does protect me from the negative things.”

For Euro 2004, Trap changed the system to a more attacking 4-2-3-1 to accommodate Totti.

“He can be more dangerous if he is close to the goal. It doesn’t matter how many strikers he plays with, I want him to attack and take risks,” he explained. It did not work out: Totti was banned for three games after spitting at Christian Poulsen in Italy’s first match.

“A good manager can make a team 5% better, but a bad manager can make them up to 30% worse,” is one of Trap’s favourite sayings, and with that in mind, he took the Benfica job in summer 2004 and beat the reigning European champions to the title, Benfica’s first in 11 years, in his first season there.

He then moved to Stuttgart, claiming he wanted to be nearer his family, but struggled back in Germany. When he was last there, as Bayern Munich coach, he won the 1996 title and 1997 German Cup, but Stuttgart drew 12 of his first 20 games in charge and Danish players Jon Dahl Tomasson and Jesper Gronkjaer both criticised his defensive tactics. One day after he dropped the pair of them, he was sacked, and replaced by Armin Veh, who led Stuttgart to the Bundesliga title last season.

Trapattoni was undaunted by his Stuttgart struggles and, two months later, contacted the owners of Red Bull Salzburg to offer his services.

“We look after about 450 athletes and he found out what we were doing from one of them,” Red Bull director Danny Bahar told me.

“His advisor called us and asked if we would be interested, and we thought his profile fit perfectly with working alongside a younger man. And the combination (with Trap as director of football and Lothar Matthaus as coach) has been working.”

The team won the Austrian league last season by an impressive 19 points but this season things have not gone their own way: they are joint-top alongside Sturm Graz and Austria Vienna, with Rapid only one point behind. No wonder that Red Bull want to keep the coaching partnership until the end of this season.

And yet the Austrian job has not been without its stressful moments. Local journalists criticised Red Bull’s fitness coach Fausto Rossi when the team appeared to take their foot off the pedal towards the end of last season. In a memorable outburst fans have immortalised on websites, Trap hit back: “I can understand criticism about results but not criticism about our work,” he said in his stilted German.

“Our training is strong. Is modern. Training wins also. I have 21 wins (trophies). Also last year and the year before that. There is blah, blah, blah behind our backs. People who don’t have a clue about training. Writing, criticising the system of training. Blah, blah, blah, blah. We are top of the table with this system. I can understand people, paying. No problema. Let whistle. Is right. Have lost. But run 90 minutes. I am a professional when it comes to psychology. We train, make fitness. People always in back make qua, qua, qua. Rubbish. I have the world, players coached everywhere.”

This season, Red Bull dropped points because of individual errors at the back. Trap oversaw the production of a DVD for each player telling them how to eliminate these errors from their game. “It was a valuable lesson for them,” he said.

The youngsters may snigger, but Trap is similar to England coach Fabio Capello in the standing he has in the world game. In fact, Capello, who famously has no friends in football, recently named Trap as the coach he most respects in the game: “He has had the courage and the personality to get back into the game and, in addition to that, to do it abroad.”

And for those who worry about his age — here is this final nugget: “I want to carry on coaching forever.”