Sweden vs. Ireland - Preview

This time next week, Ireland's World Cup qualifying campaign will still only be, on the fixture list, a half-written narrative. However, with seven games remaining prior to our Stockholm showdown, there is a palpable sense of doom. The pre-game atmosphere among Irish fans has been muted - almost resigned to inevitable fate, much like the comportment of the travelling Green Army in Prague in 2007. A battling 1-0 defeat then to the Czech Republic put paid to Ireland's qualification hopes, and as Jon Walters admitted during the week, if Ireland take less than four points from the next two games, a playoff place is very, very unlikely. Even if Ireland pull out a positive result from Friday night's game, there is little to suggest that the team in its current guise has the capability of grinding out the necessary results in the remaining games to make it into the playoffs - or indeed to overcome a seeded opponent over two legs.

Trapattoni's selections have grown more bizarre and less defensible as the seasons have passed. The controversial dropping of Andy Reid for the likes of Miller and Rowlands in 2008/9 was not, as may have been thought, a pragmatic, once-off, commendably hard-line decision, but a decision based on favouritism of a certain type of footballer, which Trapattoni sees as essential to the success of a country which does not churn out 'flair' players. The qualities of aggression, physicality, directness and graft will, according to Trap's logic, compensate for our traditional technical shortcomings through a bloody-minded refusal to play the rest of Europe at its own dilettante, tippy-tappy game.

However, football has moved on from the days of Egil Olsen's Norway, Richard Moller-Nielsen's Denmark, Jack Charlton's Ireland, and even Otto Rehegal's Greece. Graft and guts are not enough in an era when skilful players (and divers) are institutionally mollycoddled by UEFA's referees - when even the lesser European nations boast technically gifted midfielders, capable of maintaining possession, particularly when it is repeatedly gifted away.  Trap's obtuse philosophy will see the likes of Wes Hoolahan, Shane Long and possibly James McCarthy shelved for the dubious talents of Jon Walters, Conor Sammon and Paul Green, and has already put paid to the immediate international future of Darron Gibson - possibly Ireland's most impressive midfielder in the EPL. With Dunne, McGeady and Pilkington injured, and no obvious replacements apparent for Duff and Given, Ireland can not afford to cast aside its foremost talents. Yet, that is exactly what is going to happen in Stockholm tomorrow night.

Sweden, as they showed in the European Championships, have a technically sound team with a fair smattering of pace and the usual dollop of Scandinavian confidence and efficiency. If Paul Green's mooted marking job on Ibrahimovic manages to defy logic and achieve the desired effect, the likes of Russia-based Rasmus Elm and Kim Kallstrom will still provide a significant goal threat, aside from the mockery they promise to make of our beleaguered, undermanned midfield. They will be comfortable on the ball, clever in their utilisation of Ibrahimovic in deep positions, and clinical in their finishing if the chances are offered.

Ireland's likely centre-back partnership of O'Shea and Clark has not looked at ease in either of the last two friendlies, and their club form is not encouraging. Full-backs Coleman and Wilson both offer some semblance of promise and natural ability in those problematic positions, but with only three competitive starts between them, they could be in for a harrowing introduction to this level. Trap's reluctance to blood both players over the last eighteen months could be costly, as they now find themselves thrown in at the deep end. The likely wing pairing of Robbie Brady and James McClean is even less experienced at this level, but the alternatives (strikers Cox and Keogh) don't even bear thinking about. Brady's excellent set piece delivery could bear some fruit, however, and may, sadly, represent Ireland's only hope at creating chances. Up front, the Keane-Walters partnership offers little more than the isolation of an obsolete attacking principle - the 'big man, little man' combination that was so popular in the early 1990s. Keane's form is impossible to read, given the paucity of real challenges in his current employment, but one must suspect that a combination of Hoolahan and Long would be far more effective than the prospect of static strikers clinging to the shoulders of the big Swedish centre-halves.

The omission of Kevin Doyle is a non-issue, despite the usual desperate scandal-mongering of the Irish media. He would not have played, nor made much of a difference as a substitute, on his abject current form (Sammon should not have been selected either, I must add, but truly, neither deserves a place). Hoolahan and Long are the elephants in the room, and if the talents of McCarthy are sacrificed for the slapstick designs of Paul Green - Irish football's answer to Jar Jar Binks - then Trapattoni will truly deserve what comes to him. However, the prospect of being World Cup 'also-rans' with fifteen months to go until the finals is not what the Irish fans deserve, nor the hard-working, dedicated players within the squad who are hamstrung - like, dare I say it, in the doomed Staunton era - by tactical intransigence and bizarre selections.