Moscow meeting set to decide course of Euro campaign

THE map of Ireland’s 2012 European Championship campaign will be made clear today in Moscow.

The fixtures meeting for Group B takes place in the Russian capital, with the usual mix of tough dealing and compromise required to tease out the sequence of games which will lead to the finals in Poland and Ukraine in two years’ time.

Giovanni Trapattoni will not be attending the meeting but will be kept abreast of developments by Ireland’s representative at the talks in Moscow, FAI Chief Executive John Delaney.

In public, the manager has insisted that he is not overly concerned about the order in which the games take place although, when Ireland were awaiting the outcome of the World Cup play-off draw last year, Trapattoni made no secret at the time of the fact that he didn’t much fancy the prospect of playing Russia away on an artificial pitch in winter.

As well as the Russians, Ireland will play Slovakia, Macedonia, Armenia and Andorra over the course of the Group B campaign.

The home games will be the first competitive international matches played at the new Aviva Stadium on Lansdowne Road.

On past experience, sticking points and stubbornness can sometimes result in fixture negotiations taking the guts of a day to resolve but, with an early 9am local time kick off in Moscow this morning, it’s possible that the outcome could by known by lunchtime here in Ireland.