No, it’s not Trapattoni. Rewind twelve years to Mick McCarthy, and Ireland’s attempt to qualify for Euro 2000. His refusal to pick young players like the great Stephen McPhail, the great Michael Reddy, and the great Jason Gavin, were cited as reasons for our demise in that campaign, along with ultra-negative displays in Croatia and Macedonia - made all the more frustrating by the intermittent periods of fine football at home to Yugoslavia and Croatia. Surely, McCarthy, with his tactical naivety, stubbornness, and faith in the older players, wasn’t the right man to lead Ireland to the next World Cup?
However, history proved McCarthy right. That same squad of players, with minor tweaking, got us to the following World Cup, eliminating Holland en route. In retrospect, sacking McCarthy, ripping it up, and starting again, would have seriously derailed the team and scuppered hopes of qualification for 2002. Trapattoni now sits astride the exact same bacon slicer as McCarthy all those years ago, even with qualification still within reach. The football is too negative, young players are not being given a chance... It’s the same old pie-in-the-sky whinging, and it’s become tiresome; Brian Kerr was ostracised in the same way, for the same reasons. Staunton chopped and changed squads on short-term form, deployed attacking central midfielders, and picked a large quota of young players. Look where that got us.
While I agree that Trapattoni should not be immune to criticism (Paul Green springs to mind), the positives from this campaign have far outweighed the negatives. We have ground out results against the kind of teams that have caused Ireland problems before. Draws against Israel spelled the end for Brian Kerr; McCarthy still shudders at the thought of Macedonia. Trapattoni has no such regrets. The problems with the Irish side pre-date Trapattoni – a reliance on England to develop our players, the low success rate of youths who go to EPL academies, the slipshod link between the League of Ireland and grassroots football, and the ever-present competition from rugby and Gaelic Games. These factors are more to blame than Trapattoni for our lack of collective technical skill, and our tactical inflexibility. These are not new complaints.
People talk about our emerging young talent and how it’s being ignored – yet the latest ‘martyr’, Seamus Coleman, has started five out of Ireland’s twelve games this year, without making a greater impression than that of Stephen Hunt or an aging Damien Duff. James McCarthy struggles to get into a terrible Wigan side, and his early appearances for Ireland have been unremarkable. For every Roy Keane we produce, there are ten times as many overhyped underachievers - McPhail, Alan Quinn, Shaun Thornton and Liam Miller come to mind; advocates of our young Wigan protégé would do well to remember those names. Critics also forget that Trap has picked promising young players like McCarthy, Meyler, Wilson, Clark and Cunningham for squads, only for them to get injured, forcing Trap to turn to our vast reserves of grizzled journeymen, who have done a solid (if unspectacular) job.
Looking at it in perspective, Scotland have Fletcher and Adam; Wales have Ramsey; Slovakia have Hamsik; Belgium have Hazard and Defour. Ireland do not (yet) have anyone of that ilk to choose in central midfield, yet here we are, ahead of all those teams, on the brink of our first European Championship in twenty-four years. Let’s put it into perspective and enjoy it. The margins between qualification and failure are extremely delicate - this kind of excitement might not happen for another twenty years.
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