Boss wants McCarthy to play Spain game

Giovanni Trapattoni maintained yesterday’s prevailing “90%” theme at his press conference in Malahide when, in looking ahead to the game against Spain in New York on June 11, he suggested that “90%, yes,” James McCarthy would make the trip.

The element of doubt, he explained, related to the player experiencing “a little bit of groin pain” but, he added pointedly, if the pain had been bad it would have been “impossible” for McCarthy to play the way he had against Georgia. In short, Trapattoni made it clear he really wants the Wigan man in the Big Apple.

“It is important for him to come,” he declared. “Even 30 minutes against the Spanish will increase his confidence. That is important. A player should never renounce the chance to go.”

Having already lost Marc Wilson to surgery and Shane Long to the player’s wedding for the US trip, Trapattoni grew impassioned on the subject of footballers needing to meet their professional obligations.

The FAI had accepted the fixture against Spain, he said, and the people who buy tickets for the Yankee Stadium game deserve to see the likes of James McCarthy, Richard Dunne and John O’Shea — Ireland’s first, not second team.

“Our players must understand this,” he said. “It’s only three days.”

Not for the first time, the veteran Italian offered an example from his own past of what he considers the right kind of commitment to the cause — a 1983 visit by Juventus to play in Washington, during which, he recalled, they also got to meet then vice president George Bush Sr in the White House. But the point he wished to emphasise was that this trip had come at the end of a long season for the players, which in turn had followed the famous World Cup of 1982 in Spain at which seven members of the Juve team had featured in the winning Italian squad. And only eight days after they returned from the States, he recalled, Juventus began the new Italian season.

“It’s about professional discipline, respect and behaviour,” he said, his voice rising.

“The FAI have made a commitment and we must go. I have a family too. We must respect the people who want to see us in New York. They pay for tickets not to see me or you but to see the Irish players they know.”