Tardelli hopes to avoid France

Marco Tardelli is keeping his fingers crossed that the Republic of Ireland avoid France in the World Cup play-off draw.

The Irish, who bring down the curtain on their Group Eight campaign against Montenegro at Croke Park on Wednesday evening, have already booked their place in the draw as a result on Saturday night’s heart-stopping 2-2 draw with reigning champions Italy.

They will not be among the four seeds, and therefore will find themselves pitched into battle with one of the quartet of strongest sides among the eight qualifiers, and that list seems likely to comprise France, Portugal, Russia and Greece.

However, assistant boss Tardelli, who like manager Giovanni Trapattoni came close to upsetting his home nation at the weekend, has his own ideas about how he would like next Monday’s draw to go.

Asked for his preferred opponents, the Italian World Cup winner said: “All the teams are very good.

“But I would prefer Greece, maybe – and I would prefer not to meet France, because France have many good players, as do Portugal.”

Trapattoni and Tardelli put the players through their paces in Malahide once again today as they shook off the disappointment of Italy’s late equaliser, which dashed their hopes of a late charge for automatic qualification.

Had they held out, victory in Wednesday night’s game would have been enough to send them to South Africa had the Italians slipped up at home to Cyprus, admittedly an unlikely scenario.