Cool Cat O’Shea getting used to fiery Italians

When John O’Shea signed off a recent interview suggesting that, where Alex Ferguson deployed the hairdryer, Paolo Di Canio favours “a flamethrower”, he delivered a parting quip that you can be pretty sure will resurface in a lot of the coverage of proceedings at the Stadium of Light this season.

Asked on a trip to Dublin if he’d care to elaborate on the remark, Ireland’s centre-half grins and offers only a sheepish, “It’s fairly self-explanatory, I think”. But while not denying the always potentially explosive nature of the Sunderland manager’s character, O’Shea insists that there’s solid method behind the perceived madness of the fiery Italian.

“When the new manager took over with seven, eight games to go last season, we were in a fairly obvious situation — he just had to keep us up,” he says. “But from the first day of this pre-season, he spoke about wanting to play a certain way and in a certain style, playing out from the back a lot more when we can and making sure we can last the pace of games, in terms of his ideas of the intensity we need to be winning more matches. He’s changed the squad around again, too and they all seem good lads.

“We had a little training game last Saturday, and plenty of times he stopped it and wasn’t afraid to let players know whether he was happy or not with things we have been working on. It’s constructive criticism. He doesn’t want players going away from the training ground thinking ‘why is he shouting at me today’. It’s because he wants everyone to do better as a group, and he includes himself in that.”

In fact, though the two Italians were famously at odds back in the day — an enraged Di Canio once even pushing his then Juventus boss to the ground — O’Shea also sees definite echoes of Giovanni Trapattoni in the approach of the Black Cats boss. “Especially in the build up and analysis of opponents,” he nods. “He (Di Canio) uses the ‘small details’ phrase quite a bit too (laughs). From speaking to Adam Johnson it was similar with (Roberto) Mancini (at Man City) as well. Obviously, it is some sort of Italian trait in terms of their coaching schools, in having a definite way of how to play and in making sure the concentration and intelligence is there also. And it seems to be a strong trait from what I have seen.”

While the looming Premier League kick-off is uppermost in his thoughts at this point, O’Shea needs no reminding that it will only be a matter of weeks before Ireland launch into the defining phase of World Cup qualification — and, possibly, even of the whole Trapattoni era.

The Waterford man admits that, in the aftermath of the Euro 2012 debacle, the “ship was rocking” when the side were put to the sword by Germany in only the second game of the current campaign.

“But if you can’t improve yourself from major disappointments, you are in the wrong game, especially at international level,” he says. “Yes, the ship was rocking quite a bit but we managed to turn it around. Did I think the wheels had come off? No, because you’re aware of the belief that’s around the camp, aware of the management and the reaction they wanted to see from us. To be fair, the players backed it up. Those few days after the Germany game were tough. I was well used to it, but some of the younger lads were fairly shell-shocked, to say the least. We were playing the Faroe Islands and had to win and put in a good performance but if ever there was a banana skin for us, that was it.

“But, having said they were shell-shocked with everything, they’re resilient too, the younger lads. They are able to dust themselves down and get on with it. They couldn’t wait for the game to come. The training those two days after the Germany game was really intense, with lads smelling blood in terms of getting chances in the team. That’s always the case when there’s a bad result — the manager is not going to pick the same team and the lads were sensing that opportunity.”

With Ireland radically reshaped since Euro 2012, O’Shea says he’s definitely more confident now about hopes of qualification for Brazil.

“There’s lots to look forward to, but also lots of hard work and preparation to do,” he says. “The Sweden and Austria games are coming up. Because we drew in Sweden, my friends are telling me ‘no problem, we’re beating Sweden’. If only it was that easy. But the players believe whoever we go out against — and we’ve proven recently — we can cope with higher-placed or higher-ranked teams. So I don’t think the expectation is too high because the players and the management believe we’re good enough to get to the major tournaments.”

* John O’Shea was speaking in Dublin as Carlsberg celebrated its partnership as official beer of the Premier League.