It is not Trapattoni's job to manage expectations

TIPPING POINT:We are only fooling ourselves if we think the manager is to blame for the state of our national team when we just don't have the players

FERMENTED HORSE urine is not the national drink of Kazakhstan. That’s a fib propagated by the “deeeese is my seeeester” Borat film. However, Kazakhs do drink fermented horse milk. It’s called koomis. And if any Irish football fan in Astana touches the stuff, they will immediately reach for some warm p**s to rinse the taste out of their mouth.

This week taking to the pony pee won’t be just the preserve of those fanatics choosing to go on the lash in the middle of a far-off desolate steppe. Those of us left at home might reach for some fire-water too.

Because this feels too soon, way, way too soon: I know football never stops, but can’t we have a little bit more time away from “Trap” and “philosophy on the game” and “creative wasteland” and “ambition” and “players good-manager bad” and “obscene salary” and “Denis O’Brien” and “John Delaney on the razzle” and “making the most of limited resources” and the rest of the jargon that rained down on us almost as persistently through the early summer as the actual rain did.

Well no, we can’t, because now the circus has done a 180 on the path to Poznan and now we’re on the road to Rio, all Hope and Crosby aiming to wrap our green flag around Dorothy Lamour. It’s all new again.

Especially since “Trap” has supposedly been persuaded to go all Obama in terms of change, and new tactics, and formations, and of course new boys-in-green. It can only be days before the wall-charts are out, new shirts, endless “travelogues” on how to get the best deals to Vienna, Malmo, Berlin, even Astana: where to go, what to avoid, the cheapest horse-yoghurt to get wasted on.

Yep, it’s back, Reee-pubbbaaaa-lick-of- Irelann-nevveer-neeever-neeever say-no.

All the same though, Kazakhstan: glam that up. This will be a test for the true fans, the ones so devoted they sneer at others not possessed of Bray Wanderers tattoos and season-tickets to Flancare Park.

Astana used be called Ak Mola, which means “white tomb,” not exactly an image to conjure up Vegas strip enthusiasm. This is a place where monuments to old Korean War vintage Migs get visited by tourists out for a good time. The rest of the country is mostly brown, flat and dull: just think Offaly, but bigger, and with more giggles, obviously.

It could prove seminal however in the reign of “Trap”, like Saipan for McCarthy, Denmark for Hand, Granny-gate for Staunton.

Disillusionment at the thought of international football starting up again so soon after the Euros will be brief. Once the wagons are hitched, and the Ireland train jolts into motion again, momentum will take over. But it’s a different story when disillusionment switches to the manager. And it has switched in a big way.

Betting on someone’s job might not be particularly edifying, although the less the salary the more distasteful it becomes. Giovanni Trapattoni is on enough brass to make speculation on his employment prospects seem like a national pastime, and there must be a good chance the legendary Italian ain’t going to make it to the end of the qualifying campaign, no matter how much it costs to pay him off.

There’s no doubt the tide of public opinion has turned against him, something reflected in reaction to Darron Gibson’s pouting squad withdrawal over the weekend and Trapattoni’s own “idiot” two-step in relation to Shane Long. When you start doing an angry rumba at a press-conference, it doesn’t bode well for your authority.

Even more importantly, authority doesn’t survive long on the back of pandering to that public opinion. When forced to come out with platitudes about playing a new style of football, even the most balanced of managers must start to feel the ground moving underneath: especially when it’s hard not to suspect it’s only optics.

A wise man once pointed out how there are two reasons for doing anything: a good reason and the real reason. And Trapattoni’s conversion to a new dawn smacks of someone grimly determined to hang on to his gig. But that also smacks of a man under pressure and men under pressure usually revert to type. So anyone expecting some sudden conversion to Total Football on Friday is destined for disappointment.

Of course whether that means Trapattoni is wrong is a very different matter.

Just as the surest way of earning the favour of Irish football’s chattering class is by not playing, there is something perversely attractive to those same folks about blaming a manager – usually foreign, it must be said – for not encouraging the inner artist amongst the senior international team.

Despite ample evidence that most of the players will forever be more artisan than artist, the belief remains this team is a top thoroughbred being head-locked by a dullard jockey devoted to an unimaginative system that won’t let it stride out. And so we have the incessant hum of spoofers prattling on about 4-5-1, playing in the hole, playing in front of the back-four, pushing up full backs, all buzz-phrases designed to disguise a rather mundane reality. Very often the Irish players aren’t as good as the opposition.

That may not sound very tactical but even so it seems a difficult concept for many to grasp, hardly surprising among the plastic-hammer brigade, but more so for those supposedly-in-the-know about football’s plethora of other systematic options open to the Irish manager than the tried and trusted 4-4-2.

Listen long enough and it will become possible to believe re-arranging bodies in a different pattern around the pitch will result in a transformation among the “boys-in-greeeun” which is a nice idea but ignores a rather salient reality. If all it took was systems, then talent would be irrelevant. And if that’s the case, what’s the point?

The sour detritus of Euro 2012 for those toeing the Anti-Trap line ignores how Ireland were out-classed by one of the greatest international teams ever, the team that played them in the final, and Croatia who are currently ranked ninth in the world.

It takes a considerable conceit to believe that because a comparatively ordinary international side couldn’t avoid defeat against any of them that the manager must be not up to the job. However even that pales in comparison to the conceit that players who have consistently failed to attract the eagle-eyed attention of Europe’s elite clubs are being denied the opportunity to exhibit outrageous creative talents that up to now they have concealed behind a facade of sweat and grit.

Admirable as such virtues are, against better quality opposition, it is wishful-thinking to believe they can compensate on any kind of consistent basis. And it’s hard not to suspect that attempting a more aesthetically pleasing game against opposition better equipped to indulge in it is counter-productive to an extent repugnant to Trapattoni’s flint-eyed Italian football soul.

But that is a hard argument to get across when the popular mood has gone so far the other way. Trapattoni has plenty to lose on Friday and not a lot to gain. Kazakhstan are 145th in the world, behind both Grenada and New Caledonia. If Ireland can’t beat them, then Astana will be the manager’s Green Tomb.

But even if the result goes as expected, it’s still not difficult to see Trapattoni losing out to public opinion sooner rather than later.

And it’s also not difficult to conclude that such a move will be too soon, way, way too soon.