Spanish pour scorn on Irish showing

The clichés were flowing as Spanish observers rained on Ireland’s unexpectedly poor performance in losing 3-1 to Croatia in Sunday’s Euro 2012 Group C game.

“Poznan was like Limerick,” wrote Fermín de la Calle in AS.

“Cold, incessant rain and stands filled with green. Ireland, decent and catholic, were faithful to their traditions, lining up in jerseys one to eleven. Their first move ended with the ball sent into the opponents penalty area from 70 metres.”

There had been some concern in Madrid during the tournament build-up that Giovanni Trapattoni’s influence had instilled an age-old Italian-style mentality and defensive discipline into the Irish team.

Trap was described as “the old master of catenaccio” and discussed in an interview how he had drilled the Irish players to work hard, deny opponents space and never get caught out of position.

However, while the modern 21st century version of Italy had surprisingly given Spain plenty of problems in their 1-1 draw earlier, Trap’s Ireland were unimpressive both with and without the ball, reckoned de la Calle.

“The green catenaccio lasted 120 seconds,” he wrote. “Ireland were fragile like crystal and they had terrible problems in possession of the ball.”

Ladislao Javier Monino García argued in his match report for El País that Trapattoni’s careful approach had removed Ireland’s traditional strength.

“They never showed the frenetic up and at them approach which always characterises the Irish,” Monino García wrote. “Ireland were unable to change, and they lost the game and a lot of their identity.”

The thinking in Spain had been that any unpredictability in Ireland’s play would come from Aiden McGeady, but there was scorn at the Spartak Moscow winger’s muted performance.

“McGeady, Ireland’s ‘enfant terrible’, was the one who was supposed to bring a certain class to the Irish play,” according to de la Calle. “But McGeady, who Roy Keane said he would never pick, was anonymous.”