Lippi vows to go for glory

WITH his Italian side top of Group 8, and needing just one point from their last two games to secure qualification for next year’s World Cup finals, you would think Marcello Lippi would be full of the joys of life right now. You would be wrong.

It has been a long campaign.

Plagued by questions about the continued absence of Sampdoria striker Antonio Cassano, he has also had to contend with searching questions about his team’s unconvincing displays for much of the qualifiers and Confederations Cup.

The Azzurri ‘Mister’ had seemed to cry ‘enough’ earlier this week when he launched a bit of a broadside at the Italian media corps and said something along the lines of how he was “fed up with you lot”.

“That’s normal,” he said in the middle of a brief and almost equally uncomfortable late press conference in Clontarf Castle last night just after his side had enjoyed a quick walk around Croke Park. Sometimes I get upset and tell people off. I am very happy with my job. All the work I have done so far, all the many years I have done so far. There are still a few things with which I am not fully satisfied with yet.”

Giovanni Trapattoni he ain’t. Not in front of a microphone anyway.

In fairness, his mood can’t have been helped by the column of dust Fabio Cannavaro’s drug test controversy kicked up this week.

Not surprisingly, that was on the agenda again last night.

“It’s all over,” Lippi said, curtly. “Never existed. It was no problem.”

Ehm, okay … but is it?

Cannavaro, who claimed his failed drug test was as a result of taking a medicine to combat an insect sting, is having his case dealt with by the Italian Olympic Committee (CONI) but what, we enquired, was FIFA’s take on it?

“It has already been resolved. It’s been put to bed.”

Officially?

“Yes. I can see you are very interested in Cannavaro. Let’s have some other questions.”

Right then, are you naming a team tonight.

“No.”

Just when it seemed like Lippi would take the Fifth Amendment with every query, he finally opened up and one of the ice breakers was whether the visitors would settle for the draw or play to win.

“Contrary to what most people seem to think, when an Italian team goes abroad it is never to play never for a draw, it is always to win. We will try to do that tomorrow night. All respect to the Irish team but we will be playing for a win.”

Whether they will or not, however, he was reluctant to speculate.

“I can’t predict the future but it will be a difficult match. Ireland will try to win, not only for their own personal satisfaction, but to try and top the pool. We will try to beat them because that means automatic qualification.’’

A sure-fire way to get Lippi talking for more than a few seconds is to throw Trapattoni’s name into the conversation and, all of a sudden, the guy is a one-man quotes machine. Ireland have won four and drawn four games in this group thus far and, while they don’t score many goals, they have proven difficult to beat — obviously — with just two games to go. Very Italian, no?

“Trapattoni is Italian but he has a more international approach and he didn’t come to change the mentality but he did take what he had and allowed the team to grow in confidence and in his mentality.”

Lippi saw in Bari last April just how obstinate this Irish team can be but he made the point last night that the second meeting should see a more even contest with 11 players playing against 11 for more than five minutes.

How Ireland cope against a side backboned by players from AC Milan and Juventus will be instructive, regardless of the result, given their expected passage into to the play-offs where another side of Italy’s pedigree probably lies in wait.

Lippi obviously has his thoughts on the Irish side’s strengths and weaknesses, both collectively and individually, but he preferred to disguise them amid a welter of name-checking last night.

“Ireland is a strong team. I wouldn’t like to identify any particular player. They have a great goalkeeper, physically strong defenders that are good at set pieces and a good midfield in (Glenn) Whelan and (Keith) Andrews.

“The two outside wingers, I am not sure who they will play, but they have good options there and (Robbie) Keane and (Kevin) Doyle are good up front. They have good players but so do we.”