Expanded Europe may suit us just fine

Unfortunately, it rather highlights our predicament hanging off the back of the pack, but hasn’t it been, in the main, an enthralling, well-contested championship so far?

More grist to the mill for those leading the clamour to leave the format just as it is and resist Michel Platini’s plans for an expanded 24-team tournament next time round.

No doubt many across the continent will point to Thursday night as a foretaste of the slackened competitiveness we will encounter if we decide to let just anybody in. But while a swelled line-up might do nothing for the competition itself, it could be just what European football needs. Or Irish football anyway.

You’d imagine, by the time European qualifiers roll around again, Giovanni Trapattoni will no longer be shaping our approach, wherever the road to Brazil leads us.

So, with added qualification spots available, might the pressure not be so great on his successor to play the expedient, safety-first football we have come to rely on to emerge from tight groups?

With that in mind, you can’t help feeling now might be the time to thank Giovanni Trapattoni for giving our national team back its sense of purpose and wish him well in whatever it is he does next. Trap doesn’t trust us with the ball and never will but the next two years will be vital developmentally for James McClean, James McCarthy, Seamus Coleman and maybe Robbie Brady and others.

A shot to nothing at Brazil while we embed a more flexible playing style might, in the long-term, be more profitable in a football sense. But the FAI, of course, will prioritise the financial profits qualification would bring.

As you were, then.