Trap upbeat despite O’Shea blow
The 30-year-old Sunderland man had to admit defeat in his battle to shake off calf and hip injuries after training in Malahide yesterday. But his manager remained defiantly upbeat as Ireland go in search of one of the most elusive prizes in international football — three points in Moscow.
Since France won there as world champions in 1998, the Russians have only lost two competitive games on home soil, one against Germany, the other against Slovakia in the current Group B qualifying campaign.
But rather more germane to Irish hopes of even extracting one point is the fact that the same Slovakians were able to come to the Aviva Stadium on Friday and comfortably achieve supremacy everywhere but on the scoreboard.
That scoreless draw has been almost universally interpreted as a significant blow to Ireland’s hopes of qualifying for the European Championship — but Giovanni Trapattoni is having none of it.
“It was not a setback,” he insists. “The disappointment is that we didn’t score because we created great opportunities. But we have not taken a step back.”
Even allowing for a manager’s need to put a brave face on things in public, this upbeat assessment is impossible to square with the reality of a performance which was so lacking in poise and purpose that it can hardly have done much to instil confidence and self-belief ahead of tomorrow night’s daunting task.
But Trapattoni says that, after allowing the players one day to get over their dejection, the focus simply shifts to building everyone back up for what has all the makings of a make or break game. And, to that end, Trapattoni will sit his troops down tomorrow morning in their hotel here in Moscow and show them a ‘greatest hits’ DVD.
“We will show them what they did well in Paris and against Italy and Macedonia,” he says. “Until now, we have never changed our attitude, never. This is something I am sure about. We are not the kind of team which can win a game with one personality. I don’t want to offend anybody by always using the name Messi, but we are a team and we need all 11 players with the right mentality to get the right result. That is important. We can change the team but we cannot change our attitude.
“We must recover quickly, both physically and psychologically, for the next 90 minutes. I believe we can win because every 90 minutes is different. But we must score, a minimum of one goal.”
Despite patently running out of steam on Friday — and, later, admitting he had been “off the pace” and not fully match fit — Aiden McGeady looks set to start on his Spartak Moscow home artificial turf. “He will be proud to play there and he will deliver,” Trapattoni predicts. That would mean further disappointment for Stephen Hunt, who was reportedly dismayed at being left out of Friday’s starting line-up and whose late recruitment from the bench then left the Aviva baffled.
Now is not a time for panic, Trapattoni insists, nor, in more practical terms, time even for a change in tactics. The Italian suggests that, if Ireland had beaten Slovakia, he would have considered playing five in midfield tomorrow night but now the added urgency of trying to get three points means he feels he has no option but to play with two up front.
Indeed, it seems the only changes will be enforced ones, as Sean St Ledger’s suspension and John O’Shea’s late withdrawal means that Darren O’Dea is likely to partner Richard Dunne in the heart of the defence while Trapattoni has not yet made up his mind whether to opt for Kevin Doyle or Simon Cox alongside Robbie Keane up front. “We will watch Kevin and decide if it is best to start him or not,” says the manager.
Trapattoni retains concerns about Doyle’s conditioning, both physical and mental, but while the player was certainly unusually laboured on Friday, when a question was put to him afterwards about his fitness, he replied sharply, “I’m fine”, as if baffled that anyone should think otherwise.
And looking ahead to the game against Russia, the Wolves man thinks there is an upside to Ireland having to win this game.
“We usually play better away from home, though I don’t know why that is,” he says. “And against bigger opposition, we seem to do very well at the moment. We’ll need to do that tomorrow night and everyone needs to be firing on all cylinders. It will be tough but usually in those we come out on top.
“Drawing [against Slovakia] makes it a bit more straight-forward for us. We want to win the game now. If we’d have won on Friday maybe we might have gone into it a bit more negatively and sat back and tried to get the point. If we draw away to Russia, it’s not going to be the end of the world but if we want to top the group and not be in a play-off I think we have to win.
“To get four points from these two games was what we set out for, and I think it’s what everyone would have been happy with.
“We still have that opportunity. Let’s not be negative about the game, just be positive and hopefully do well.”
