Trap simply a man of a different era

If this is the end, we should have known from the beginning what we were letting ourselves in for with Giovanni Trapattoni because he never disguised his intentions for the Republic of Ireland.

The man who was recruited from Red Bull Salzburg back in 2008 may have gone full circle with last night’s defeat to Austria as speculation about this being his last act as Ireland manager refused to go away.

If it is to be arrivederci to the Italian, then this World Cup qualifier showed us the good, the bad, and what we’ve come to expect from him. There was plenty of fight early on, then tactical naivety took over, before the opportunity to make the necessary changes to snatch a victory came and went.

Nothing has been confirmed about his contract being paid up, but if the white smoke does wisp out of Abbottstown any time soon, we can take time to reflect on what Trapattoni brought to the job. And it is likely we will agree he finished his 64th game the same way that he started his first.

The template was a 4-4-2 formation with Richard Dunne and Robbie Keane (the only survivors from his first game against Serbia in Croke Park) appointed on-field leaders, two wide men charged with creative duties, set-pieces deemed to be the best route to goal, and instructions given to two midfielders to never stray too far. It was predictable fare.

By looking at that approach one wouldn’t believe Trapattoni needed to win this game to keep Ireland in the hunt for next summer’s World Cup – not to mention saving his own job. Although, he has never changed in the last five-and-a-half years and wasn’t about to last night.

If we are being honest with ourselves, we should have known from his unveiling in a packed RDS concert hall in May 2008 that this is how it would be under his watch. No matter where he had previously stopped in his managerial career, Trapattoni stuck to what he knew best and it largely proved to be successful.

Rather than listening closely to translator Manuela Spinelli when he started to compare Ireland to the Greece team who stunned the world and shook the beautiful game when they won the European Championships in 2004, we left that first press conference believing he was our new miracle worker.

It would be unfair to the 74-year-old if we tried to bury his highlights into the back of the Irish football archives as he did bring an organisation that was desperately lacking under Steve Staunton’s time, a truckload of new faces, and the highs of the play-off victory over Estonia, the performance against France, and, ahem, the Carling Nations Cup triumph.

For all of the good he has done for Ireland, most notably, ending a 12-year absence from playing at a major finals when qualifying for Euro 2012, trouble has followed him around like an unwanted shadow. He is simply a man of a different era, where having coloured headlines on teletext would be considered part of his digital revolution.

So it should never really have been a surprise that Trapattoni would stick so rigidly to a tactical approach that brought him success elsewhere. The FAI knew that they were hiring a man who delivered results and we took a blind eye to how those were achieved because our team had tumbled into the doldrums with Staunton. The results did come too as Ireland went unbeaten in the 2010 World Cup qualifying campaign before the hand of Thierry Henry and the foot of William Gallas stopped their march towards South Africa. Then came the run to Poland and the Euros before Trapattoni’s out-dated tactics and baffling in-game decisions were exposed.

Even last night, we tricked ourselves into believing that he would finally alter his ways and all of those years of experience would spark Ireland into a side capable of overcoming their average hosts. Even with second place in Group C slipping away, he stalked his technical area on the sideline, trusting in his old ways right to the end.

The Austrians knew Trapattoni would stick to his script and they kept belief it would eventually lead to an opening, which David Alaba took on 84 minutes. So with this defeat ending the World Cup dream, Trapattoni should be judged by what we originally brought him in for – the results.