Croatia game is crucial, says Whelan

SOCCER EURO 2012 COUNTDOWN:NEWS THAT Spain might be down a player or two prompted only a wry smile and a shake of the head from Glenn Whelan yesterday.

Carles Puyol and David Villa are big players for the current European champions, but asked if their absence will make much difference to the way the Republic of Ireland’s group pans out, the Dubliner is not convinced.

“Nah,” he sighs, “if you said Fabregas, Iniesta, Xavi plus a few others . . .”

The Stoke City midfielder was in town yesterday to launch the latest version of the Predator boot, a piece of kit that, according to the press release, comes with “lethal zones”.

So you’re thinking to yourself that these boots will be a welcome addition to the Irish lads’ armoury in Poland until you read further down that they supply them to Xavi too.

Whelan readily acknowledges the challenge the Barcelona star and his compatriots will present when the two sides meet in Gdansk and admits the Irish may find themselves chasing the ball a bit.

However, just as manager Giovanni Trapattoni has faith in his players, they, it seems, believe in him and the 28-year-old believes the occasion may not be the formality that most predict.

“We know it is going to be tough,” he says. “Spain is going to be a massive game but then we would rather play Spain than, without any disrespect, someone like a Poland or a Ukraine because the spotlight is going to be on Spain with the favourites’ tag and all of their achievements of the last few years.

“I think you are going to find yourself in games against teams that have a lot of possession. We see that in the Premiership, but as long as they have the ball and they’re not scoring then you’re okay.

“Obviously if they have a lot of possession and they’re scoring goals left, right and centre then you’re worried. But I’m sure the manager will have a game-plan and he’ll think of a way of playing that will suit us as best as he can.

“Anyway,” he continues, “I think we’re thinking too far ahead. I think the Croatia one is a massive one first. If you get a result from the first one then no matter what happens against Spain you’ve still got a chance to qualify against Italy then. So we know and the players know that the thing is to worry about Croatia; that’s got to be the biggest game in our group even though we play Spain and Italy as well. I think the first game is always crucial in any tournament that you play.”

Like most of his team-mates, Whelan’s only real experience of tournament football came at underage level and, as Brian Kerr recalled in The Irish Times on Saturday, it wasn’t always plain sailing at that level either, with the midfielder omitted a decade ago from the squad for a European Youth Championships when Kerr was in charge.

Whelan, just as he has been this time around, had played a central role in getting the Republic of Ireland to the finals but he appears to have taken the disappointment of being left behind by Kerr well enough and bounced back to play at a World Championship the following year.

Having that experience under his belt may be the reason he took it upon himself to have a chat with some of those overlooked by Trapattoni this week and certainly his advice appears to have been simple: to pick themselves up, dust themselves off and set about impressing all over again in the autumn.

He won’t have had to pick up the phone to Marc Wilson, his Stoke City team-mate whose versatility should have made him an attractive proposition to the Italian. However, for some reason, he has never quite recovered from getting off on the wrong foot with the 73-year-old Italian.

Whelan speaks highly of Wilson’s form in recent months at left-back, something that should have endeared him even more to Trapattoni, and insists that if there had been misunderstandings, then Wilson had done nothing to cause the problems.

“I don’t think it was ever anything to come from Marc,” he says. “I think he always wanted to play; he always made himself available but he wasn’t picked at times so what can you do? You can’t twist a manager’s arm to say ‘you should pick me’. All Marc has to do is keep doing what he is doing, which is playing well for Stoke and then people are going to notice.”

He seems just a little bemused on the other hand by the rise and rise of James McClean, whose impact at Sunderland this season has made him as popular south of the border as his tweets have made him unpopular in certain quarters north of it of late.

Whelan hasn’t set pulses racing quite like that but he doesn’t mind. As close a thing as there is to a permanent fixture in the Irish team and secure at Stoke having just signed a new long-term deal, the Dubliner is in a good place just now.

The aim in Poland, though, is to get to somewhere even better.