Trap: You want art? Look at a Picasso

THE only time Giovanni Trapattoni ever mentions politics in public, it’s always in the context of football and invariably in the dismissive tone of a veteran who has reluctantly had to come to terms with a modern game besieged by spoofers, spinners, money-men and purveyors of industrial quantities of red tape.

But if we were to fantasise about where the Italian might find a party political spiritual home in the auld sod, there are grounds for casting him as a Soldier of Destiny, from the ‘una duce, una voce’ style of management to the manifesto which sums up where, two years into the job, he feels his Irish project is at: a lot done, more to do.

Following a winning end to Ireland’s international season of so much regret, and the emergence of Derby’s Paul Green and Manchester City’s Greg Cunningham as new cover for his core personnel, Trapattoni yesterday added what he described as a third-party approach from Celtic to the already lengthy list of suitors he says have tried to pry him from the hands of the FAI.