SOCCER:WITH HIS team still very much in contention at the half-way point for a place at next year's European Championships and his current contract a little further down the road than that, Giovanni Trapattoni expressed a desire yesterday to manage the Republic of Ireland for a further two years, with the 72-year-old expressing the hope that he might guide the team to the World Cup in Brazil in 2014.
“If the FAI are happy; if they believe in our project, then sure why not?” he said. “Our project started one year ago when we set out to change the team and we showed you yesterday some of these new players. They are growing and I am happy because I believe now in this young group.
“I would be proud to continue here,” he added. “And if they ask me I will be happy, but if they do not believe then I can look around at other possibilities. We can decide but I think we can do a good job and this team can go to the World Cup which will be special as it is in Brazil, the home of Pele.”
After what was effectively an unsuccessful time as Italian national team manager, which he puts down to a variety of factors including questionable decisions by a referee who was arrested last year for drug smuggling, Trapattoni admitted to having a certain sense of unfinished business in the international game.
“I think I achieved good results with a strong team but sure, I am also in credit with Uefa and Fifa a little after some of the things that happened. I’m due something back in international football.”
His first opportunity to collect is in the Ukraine and Poland next year as long as he can get the Irish through the qualification process, and he insisted yesterday that the team is well placed as it looks forward to another meeting with Macedonia followed, after the summer, by key encounters with Slovakia and Russia as well as games against Andorra (away) and Armenia (home).
“Macedonia will be a difficult game. I have played many games in this region and they are tough games. We need the mentality,” he said before suggesting that the more open game plan adopted against Uruguay will be set aside as the team returns to the pursuit of points. “Play well or not,” he said, “the result is important. There is the moment when we need to think about the result because the result stays while after two days the performance is gone.”
Tuesday’s display, though, does seem to have fired his enthusiasm for the younger group of players he used this week. Of Tuesday’s starters Shane Long, Keiren Westwood and Keith Fahey came in for particular praise and Trapattoni suggested that he would be perfectly happy to use “three or four of them in Macedonia because they are ready now”.
Trapattoni felt James McCarthy did less well, but did not blame the 20-year-old because he felt he had been a little “lost” in the role handed to him and he continued to predict big things for the Wigan midfielder.
His plan now, it appears, is to step up the development of what might be seen as the peripheral or emerging players while integrating the best into a side he still feels is capable of qualifying for the Europeans. “We have an opportunity now to start again with this group in the way we did with the senior players back in Portugal. We can also use the Carling Cup to give them opportunities and experience.”
For the games against Northern Ireland and Scotland in late May, he will use much the sort of squad he kept as his disposal for the Uruguay game in order, amongst other things, “to preserve the senior players for the game in Macedonia”.
However, his fear is that the established players will be tired after a long campaign in England although he was at pains to stress that this is an issue and not a specific concern about Kevin Doyle who, Mick McCarthy said yesterday will be out for between one and two months.
The plan then, it seems, is to release many of the senior players again and bring the younger group to the United States. Talks are continuing about games, with Italy in New York on June 11th a strong possibility. Another game is provisionally pencilled in for a few days earlier against unnamed opposition. It’s a nice idea and impressive to see him planning for a future he is not yet sure he will be a part of, but the Italian federation confirmed yesterday that if it does send its team to America it will be a full strength affair and it remains to be seen whether his countrymen, or the FAI for that matter, are happy to be part of Trapattoni’s grand plan for 2014.
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