Why Trap needs to rewrite the book

IS there a man, woman or child left in the country who doesn’t know by now that Giovanni Trapattoni’s birthday is on St Patrick’s Day? Or who hasn’t seen his infamous Bayern Munich press conference on Youtube, the one which might best be described as being, at once, scary and hilarious?

Our learning curve for all things Trap has been steep. Even Denis O’Brien admitted to subjecting the new manager to a bit of the old google, and we’re forever being told that Irish football’s benefactor is something of footie nut.

But then, even those who like to think we know a thing or two about what our Italian friends call “calcio” — see how quickly we’re catching on? — initially felt obliged to double-check the spelling of the new gaffer’s name, just to be sure, to be sure that it was indeed two t’s and one p, and not the other way around.

We should make the most of these honeymoon days, when Trap has still to touch down on these shores and the future of Irish football seems rich with Italian promise.

The forthcoming friendly games will be fascinating for what they ought to reveal of the new manager’s intentions, but it won’t be until far off September, and the opening of European Championship hostilities in Georgia and Montenegro, that we will be in a position to begin forming a really meaningful assessment of the nascent Trapattoni era. Yesterday’s man, as some in Italy would have it, or the godlike genius his trophy-laden CV suggests? Autumn will tell.

Meantime, we can reflect that it’s maybe a pity that the Italian connection has come as late as it has in the history of Irish football; otherwise we might have ended up with a man at the helm of whom Trap has long been regarded as a leading disciple.

Trapattoni, then a tough-tackling midfielder, at first played under and later became an assistant to, Nereo Rocco, the larger than life manager who led AC Milan to League and European Cup success in the 60s. Many have seen shades of Rocco in Trap’s defensive leanings — the

former has been dubbed “the god of catenaccio” — and also in his vociferous and emotional input from the dug-out. Certainly, Trap’s mentor didn’t mince his words.

In Calcio, John Foot’s essential history of Italian football, the section on Rocco begins with the following exchange — Journalist: “May the best team win.”

Rocco: “I hope not”.

Yet Rocco’s sides were much more than one-dimensional, as witnessed in Milan’s sensational demolition of Ajax in the 1969 European Cup Final in Madrid, a 4-1 rout of the Dutch masters in which one Giovanni Trapattoni was hailed for man-marking Johann Cruyff out of the game.

Rocco — “El Paron”, The Boss — was an extraordinary, larger than life character whose sayings are still quoted with relish in his native land. A favourite piece of advice to his players was: “Kick everything that moves, and if it is the ball, all the better.”

He was also a bit of bully and obsessive about the lifestyles of his players, often trailing them by car and nosing into their relationships. On the training ground and during a game, he found it hard to control his emotions, often exploding in anger at a mistake by a player or a perceived injustice by a referee.

Like Jack Charlton, he hated to see the ball lost in midfield but, as his eyesight deteriorated in later years, he frequently had to rely on an assistant to finger the culprit. (The diplomatic answer, by the way, was “Giovanni”, since Milan had three of them on board).

On one occasion at a training session Rocco was so enraged by something amiss on the pitch that he kicked out full force at what he thought was a bag of shirts. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a tool kit and the players had to stifle their giggles as Rocco limped away. Controlling their emotions proved more difficult for the players during a game in which the Milan team and manager were on a million lire bonus if they could avoid defeat. Rocco duly spent most of the game screaming at one midfielder not to get forward. Eventually, he roared at him: “Get back or we’ll lose the million.”

It is said that another player was laughing so hard he had to be substituted.

Rocco who, as they say, liked a drink, died at the age of 69 in 1979, but his influence lived on in the young Giovanni Trapattoni, who took over at Milan from his predecessor before going on to enjoy his greatest successes at Juventus.

John Foot reports that during a game against Aston Villa, the almost hyperventilating Trap leaped up from the bench and smashed his head off the top of the dugout, with the result that a huge bruise grew, cartoon-style, throughout the second half.

For those of us hoping that Trap is the man to turn around the fortunes of Irish football, Foot’s analysis makes for sobering reading. Of course, he pays due tribute to the man’s stunning successes at Juve, Munich and elsewhere but characterises his return to Italian football as that of a career going into “a slow decline”.

Much is made of the manager’s oft-criticised policy of replacing a forward with a midfielder when his teams are a goal to the good, a factor which, as much as dodgy refereeing, say critics, contributed to Italy’s dismal performances at the 2002 World Cup and 2004 European Championship finals. Almost as a PS there is mention of further titles in Portugal and Austria, but the statistics from his career in international management remain damning.

In the finals of major tournaments, Italy’s record under Trap reads: played seven, won two, drawn two, lost three. Goals for: eight. Goals against: eight.

All of which may mean nothing or everything to his stewardship of Ireland. John Foot has done a fine job in illuminating the Italian game. We can only hope now, that as far as his part in the narrative is concerned, Giovanni Trapattoni is about to write a new and happier ending to the story.