SOCCER/WORLD CUP 2010 PLAY-OFF:WITH THE Irish team potentially heading into its first penalty shoot-out since the 2002 World Cup next week, Giovanni Trapattoni may not have been entirely thrilled to hear Sunday's news from Falkirk where Aiden McGeady's failure to convert a spot kick effectively cost Celtic two points.
A few days later, though, it’s clear that the 23-year-old winger views the miss as something of an aberration, insisting that if the need arises at the Stade de France, he’ll be close to the front of the queue when the manager casts an eye around for volunteers.
“Yeah I’d be quite happy to go up and take another one,” says McGeady (right). “I mean it’s the first penalty I’ve missed in the last few years and I just didn’t hit it well enough. I was trying to hit it straight down the middle but pulled it a little bit and when the rebound came back to me I wasn’t really ready for it, but to be fair I should have stuck it away.
“Still,” he adds, “if you’re putting yourself up for penalties you need to be man enough to take the flak for missing them and that’s what happened.”
To take a penalty, of course, McGeady will have to be on the pitch in the event of a shoot-out and his position, already uncertain given the competition he has always faced from Damien Duff and Stephen Hunt, has been made much tougher by the emergence of Liam Lawrence as a serious contender for one of the team’s wide positions.
Trapattoni often provides hints over the course of a week’s training as to who will be favoured when it’s time to name his team and two days into the build-up to Saturday’s game at Croke Park, McGeady wouldn’t appear to have too much to cheer about.
Duff has played in the team of “probables” twice while Hunt and Lawrence have had a run-out each. The Celtic player, however, will be hoping to get a look in this afternoon and, more importantly, on Saturday when a start or appearance from the bench would make it 30 caps since his debut against Jamaica in the summer of 2004.
“Well, there are four players pushing hard for two places,” he says.
“Four doesn’t go into two so there are going to be two who are disappointed. Hopefully I’m not one of them.
“Sometimes it’s not down to playing badly, though. I remember the Cyprus game away from home, I think the manager just wanted to go with Hunty because he felt he was better going back down the pitch defensively and that’s fair enough if he wanted that.
“The lads eventually won the game, so I couldn’t argue with that. For games at home maybe he feels I’m suited for that better because he wants us to attack more, I don’t know. I guess it’s different players for different games. You can’t get disheartened, but you want to play every single game.”
He’s hoping that when Trapattoni sits down to weigh up his options for this game, the veteran coach will have his lively display in the first half against Italy still fresh in his mind although the 23-year-old readily acknowledges that he could have made a more compelling case for his inclusion had things gone better on a couple of occasions.
“I felt I did okay, yeah,” he says. “I had played against Zambrotta before actually, but he’s a world class defender. I felt the only thing that let me down was that a couple of times I had the chance to shoot and I didn’t, I went for the cross instead.
“It’s just one of those things after the game, you just can’t stop thinking about it. I had the chance to shoot when I went past Camoranesi and it opened up for me but I tried to cross it for Kevin Doyle at the back post.
“Another couple of times when I did cross, I hit the first man. That’s something I maybe should have tried to better. But apart from that I was pretty happy with my overall display.”
His hope is that he’ll get to improve on it this Saturday night.
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