Irish eyes down for D-Day
The FAI will be represented in Zurich this afternoon by President David Blood and Chief Executive John Delaney. Ireland manager Giovanni Trapattoni has decided against attending the draw himself. Last week he said that he was a superstitious man and didn’t want to jinx Ireland’s hopes of gaining the most favourable outcome.
He pointed out that the last time he’d attended a World Cup draw – as manager of Italy, ahead of the finals in Japan and Korea in 2002 – the Azzurri had subsequently ended up on the wrong end of a number of contentious refereeing decisions in the tournament itself before finally bowing out in controversial circumstances to South Korea.
However, although Trapattoni is expected to be at his home in Milan today, the FAI said yesterday that their delegation will be in regular contact with him as the draw unfolds.
Owing to FIFA’s controversial late decision to seed next month’s play-offs, Ireland already know that they will come up against one of France, Portugal, Russia and Greece.
Ukraine, Bosnia and Slovenia are the other countries alongside Ireland in the bottom half of the draw.
Trapattoni has been careful to avoid making his wish list public but it’s hardly a secret that, of the four possible candidates, he would favour Greece, the lowest ranked of the seeded teams and the team already nominated by assistant manager Marco Tardelli as the preferred opposition for Ireland.
And although France and Portugal contain more in the way of household names – even if Ronaldo remains a major injury worry for the Portuguese – Russia, under the management of the inspirational Guus Hiddink, seem to be ones Trapattoni would be most anxious to avoid, to judge by his less than enthusiastic remarks last week about having to play on an artificial surface in Moscow as the fierce Russian winter begins to kick in.
Other than that, the Italian has been scrupulously sticking to his ‘no-easy games in international football’ mantra, allowing only that he would like to play the away game first – a consideration coloured by his long experience of what he called the “tricky” situations which can arise for football teams who find themselves playing decisive second games away from home.
Asked to assess the possibilities yesterday, FAI chief executive John Delaney said: “Well, we do better against the bigger teams. We did that against Italy over two legs, we were very good.
“You get all opinions, like, ‘Are France are a top team?’; ‘Is Domenech a top manager or not?’; ‘Are Greece an easy draw because they haven’t any got the top star players like Portugal have in Ronaldo?’; ‘Is Russia too far away and is Arshavin a top player?’ You get all of that.
“Look we’re in it, we’ll take who we get and whoever we get we’ll give them a run for their money.’’
Delaney once again expressed his disappointment at FIFA’s belated decision to seed the play-offs, saying that he “doesn’t know of any other major tournament where you don’t know the rules when you go into it.”
However, he felt that there was little point in Ireland joining forces with the other non-seeds to protest.
“My experience has always been when FIFA make a decision, it’s almost impossible to change their minds,” he said.
“I wasn’t surprised. I believe the commercial department in FIFA wants the best players and the biggest countries to be in South Africa, I think there’s no doubt about that.
“They countenance the idea of Portugal with Ronaldo playing France in a play-off – and having one of those two countries knocked out – as something the powers that be in FIFA weren’t going to allow.”
n Eurosport and Sky Sports News are carrying live television coverage of today’s draw at 1pm.
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