Trap ‘expects’ to stay on but admits fate now out of his hands

If it was game over for Giovanni Trapattoni in more ways than one in Torshavn last night, he was putting a brave and even defiant face on it when he came in to meet the media after the 4-1 win.

“I expect to continue to be the manager,” he said. “We have played only three games at the start of qualifying and we lose only once against the best team. But it is not my decision.”

Asked if he thought he still had the support of the FAI, he replied: “I don’t know. I know only what I did in three years — this I know. After that, the FAI decide.”

The 73-year-old seemed determined not to turn a drama into a crisis.

“For me it’s only a job,” he reflected. “What I say, I say always: I am proud to be manager of this team and these players. We discover many young players over the years, and tonight was important for them. They had a good reaction, and answered the rhetorical question: ‘you have lost control of team’. The team answered your question, not me.

“We deserved to win. I had confidence about the team because I had asked for a good reaction. In the first 15 or 20 minutes we had the advantage, then lost a bit of security. But in the second half we dominated the game. I saw McCarthy, Coleman, also Jonathan (Walters), Cox and Marc Wilson all play well. And it was not easy psychologically for the team after the defeat against Germany.”

Inevitably, the questions kept returning to the contentious issue of the manager’s position, and particularly to apparent leaks to the media suggesting the FAI had already made plans to dismiss him.

“This is news to me, I’m not aware of these suggestions,” he said. “But I am a man, a serious professional, I have worked in other clubs with 100% responsibility. That is my professional seriousness. So I will continue to renew the young players, and change the squad slowly, slowly. For me it’s a great honour to be in my position.”

Yet, at least a hint of uncertainty was apparent when he was asked if it had crossed his mind that he might be saying goodbye to these same players after this match.

“Maybe, maybe,” he mused. “I said before I start the press conference that the media is media and is the same in Germany, Austria, Portugal. I know very well the president of the FAI. There is a very simple sentence in my history — the winner has one hundred fathers and the losers are orphans. Football clubs and associations change like the wind, not just the FAI.”

He conceded that he had not had a conversation with John Delaney about the latest developments but was not inclined to attach any significance to the fact.

“I spoke or met with John Delaney maybe one or two times in three years in (the team base in) Portmarnock and a couple of times he has come in to say congratulations (after matches). So I am not concerned whether he comes to talk to me or not.”

And Trapattoni added that he won’t be meeting with the FAI today either, since he has to fly home early to Italy to visit a sister of his who has been hospitalised — a commitment which means he has had to cancel his customary press conference in Dublin on the day after a game.

As for whether last night might have been a farewell appearance in front of his team as well as the media, Giovanni Trapattoni finally looked bemused.

“No,” he pointed out, “we have in November another game.”