Trapattoni should sleep over for Ireland

IT’S A striking image, to be sure. Stephen Ireland yawns, climbs out of his bed, pulls back the curtains on a new day – and there, peering back in at him through the window, is the smiling face of an elderly Italian gentleman, attired in bespoke pyjamas, perhaps carrying a bouquet of flowers and mouthing a chirpy buon giorno.

Or, to put it another way, Roy Keane thinks that Giovanni Trapattoni should sleep outside Stephen Ireland’s house if that’s what it takes to bring the man Keane reckons is the best Irish footballer currently playing, back into the national fold.

“Look at Brian Clough,”, says Keane. “When he was manager he was trying to get Archie Gemmill to sign and he slept on his sofa. That’s what I’d do with Stephen Ireland; well I wouldn’t sleep on his sofa but I’d sleep outside his house and try and get him back.