The light and dark of Luz

FORGET Jane Fonda – what the world needs now is a Giovanni Trapattoni workout DVD.

We’ve seen the odd memorable sight during our week on the Algarve – a little mangy mutt carefully using a pedestrian crossing to negotiate a busy road in the town of Lagos, probably takes the, er, dog biscuit – but perhaps nothing quite as startling as the spectacle of the new manager of Ireland going through his personal warm-down routine after a squad training session yesterday.

While the team’s fitness guru, Fausto Rossi, put the players through their paces – a state of the art business which at times involved moulding them into almost sculptural poses – Trapattoni lay flat on his back on the turf away to one side and proceeded to launch into a flurry of bends, stretches, press-ups and whatever you wouldn’t be having yourself, even if you were half the age of the 69-year-old Italian.

While the snappers gleefully snapped away – roll up, roll up and see the amazing flexible pensioner! — the assembled hacks looked on in mute astonishment, some of them (well, okay then, some of us) tucking in our bellies and even taking to hiding our cigarettes behind our backs out of sheer guilty embarrassment. With Trap’s appointment as Ireland gafferisimo, the focus has been mainly on his outstanding cv as a coach.

But watching him on the training ground is to be reminded that he also had an illustrious career as a player, winning three European Cups, one UEFA Cup and three league titles as a tigerish defender and defensive midfielder with AC Milan.

Today, here in Luz, there was due to be a reminder of one of his finest hours – marking Benfica’s Eusebio out of the European Cup final at Wembley in 1963 – but a planned joint press conference, hosted by the Oceanica property group who are housing the Ireland squad, had to be postponed when it became apparent the legendary Portuguese striker wouldn’t be able to make the trip. Trapattoni was looking forward to meeting up again with one of his most illustrious opponents and was said to be hugely disappointed that the event had to be called off.

Still, maybe it’s just as well. The great Eusebio is carrying a few extra pounds these days and the wiry Trap would probably only have challenged him to a game of three-and-in. Earlier this week, he revealed that he’d once played a 90 minute training match for Juventus at the age of 50.

That might be a bit beyond him now but you can’t help half suspecting that, like Stephen Hunt, he could still do a job as an impact sub.

Yesterday’s training session saw manager and players dampened by a brief but heavy downpour, as clouds once again reared their ugly heads over this part of the world. That’s how it’s been all week here, bright sun and hot temperatures suddenly giving way to overcast skies and a surprisingly nippy breeze. Last week, Trapattoni observed that he’d brought some Italian weather to Ireland; now it seems he has brought some Irish weather to the Algarve.

Still, it remains an appealing place in which to spend a few days even if professional obligations tend to keep us away from the pool. Your correspondent first ventured out here way back in 1982 and, via a small tv, got to enjoy that year’s wonderful World Cup from the cosy vantage point of what I suspect, even then, was the last remaining cheap tumbledown pension in Praia da Rocha. Already over-developed more than 25 years ago, that popular holiday destination is now indistinguishable from any of the crammed and garish high-rise resorts in neighbouring Spain, all shoulder to shoulder towering apartment blocks and wall to wall English and Irish pubs.

Happily, the authorities in Portugal spotted the error of their ways, with the result that a lid has since been kept on high-rise development in the western Algarve. Sure, there are plenty of villas and apartment complexes hugging the coast but now they tend to spread out rather than up so that, for example, the heart of Luz, where the Ireland squad is based, is still recognisable as the compact fishing village it once was.

But some things have changed, and not for the better. Two years ago, when we were in nearby Lagos with Steve Staunton’s squad, Luz was famous only for its lovely beach and laid-back ambience, the perfect destination for a more tranquil family holiday. Now, of course, it’s infamous as the place where Madeleine McCann disappeared just over a year ago.

There are few visible reminders that Luz is the scene of an unsolved crime which has transfixed millions. The familiar but faded poster, with that haunting picture of the little girl, now only peers out of the very occasional window or car windscreen and, if you didn’t know better, you could spend some time here without ever guessing that Luz, through absolutely no fault of its own, is a place of infamy. And you suspect too that the locals would prefer to keep it that way. That was certainly the first-hand experience of a colleague who was subject to a prolonged rant from a taxi driver on the media, the McCanns and all those he charged with having brought his beautiful home place into disrepute.

What can you say? Best to say nothing, probably. As lowly sports journalists, always on the road to somewhere else, we’re just passing through, briefly stopping off to report the latest news on groin strains and hamstring tweaks, before packing our bags again and heading off to the next city and the next game.

As a rule, we don’t do life and death stuff. And, unlike others, we should count ourselves lucky we’re able to move on.