Is this to be Trap’s last stand?

Tiny, placid Torshavn provides an almost surreally inappropriate backdrop for such a landmark sports story — the last stand of one of the biggest names in world football taking place in the smallest capital on earth.

Altogether more country village than teeming metropolis, the capital of the Faroe Islands has oodles of charm but hardly what one could call, in all conscience, an electric atmosphere — indeed for a couple of hours after the Irish squad landed here on Sunday, all the cosy homesteads dotted around the hills had to revert to candlelight as a power cut plunged the islands into darkness.

Nothing, however, could disrupt the buzzing grid of rumour and speculation that Giovanni Trapattoni has finally reached the end of the road as Ireland manager — a journey of singular highs and lows which had taken him from Dublin to Kazakhstan and many points in between — in this wild and wondrous outpost in the North Atlantic.