GROUP EIGHT MANAGER'S REACTION: THERE WAS a moment towards the end of the first half of Saturday's game in Sofia when Damien Duff travelled almost the width of the pitch to deliver some friendly advice to Glenn Whelan. The Stoke City midfielder had just conceded a throw near halfway after pushing the ball past an opponent, getting clipped as he took off in pursuit of it and just about staying on his feet.

Duff jogged over and made a sign with his hands that clearly suggested Whelan should have gone down after the contact, thereby winning a free the other way. A few metres away on the sideline, Giovanni Trapattoni must have been pleased.

“Early doors, I said that he’s like Mourinho for those little things,” said Duff of the veteran Italian manager after the game. “People can knock it and say it’s ugly but it’s what gets you results and points, not three points but a point on the board. It mightn’t be pretty but that’s what it’s all about.”

It’s not something, you suspect, that Trapattoni would ever deny and yesterday morning as he reflected on the events of the night, and indeed season, just passed, the former Juventus boss was again at pains to point out that he sees little value in his players, “playing well but losing”.

Communication was his theme of the day. His need to get his message across effectively to the players is, of course, a major priority and, appropriately after Duff had taken time out to provide a little guidance for less experienced team-mates the night before, the willingness of senior squad members to communicate with more recent arrivals features pretty high on his list too.

“In my life and my career, the objective every day is to improve and I can see that now too with these players. We have to learn together again. In this game we had a big opportunity, a moment to switch the light on and off. We have to learn whether to break or what are our objectives in this moment.

“We need communication because against Bulgaria we conceded a goal when it was an optimal situation for us. I will speak with the players because I wish they can learn. It’s important to have a little bit of arrogance; not a lot, because I don’t like a lot of arrogance but a little can be good.”

It wasn’t clear if Trapattoni was aware that some of his critics back in Ireland felt that his team’s performance had been too negative. He hinted at believing as much himself with his suggestion that at 1-0 up the players should have kicked on and sought to build on their advantage.

The atmosphere on the plane home after the game, though, gave the distinct impression that the players were satisfied with what had been achieved with the sound of raucous singing from the first 10 rows, almost but not quite, drowning out the noise from a few snoring fans and reporters towards the back.

At one point Trapattoni stood at the front and formally thanked everyone for their efforts during the campaign to date but when asked if he had joined in with the singing claimed that he could not as he had lost his voice from calling to his players so much during the game. Pressed on what he might have sung if he’d been able, he produced a big grin and announced: “Arrivederci Africa.”

Getting Ireland to the World Cup finals, he observed, would feel like winning a scudetto but he baulked at the idea that it might be his greatest achievement, insisting that he saw the potential of the squad he was inheriting before he took the job and pointing out that after highly respectable performances at four major championships, the Irish have long since shaken any minnows’ tag that might have been attached to them.

“I think Ireland has already been famous and known in Italy, I remember in 1990. We put Ireland on an island because it was hot,” he said with a laugh. “We wanted to make them sweat a bit. You were already on the map. Like everything else there are ups and downs but Ireland is a nation with four million inhabitants, it is not easy to use the same all of the time. There is a manager and there are players. For me qualifying would be an enormous satisfaction but when I took the job it was because I saw the potential of the players Ireland had and I believed that we could learn together.”

They have, he implies, more to learn if they are to turn a decent position now into qualification after the summer but Trapattoni, you sense, is happy that things are moving in the right direction and again there was acknowledgement that he will be happy to extend his stay if the FAI expresses a desire that he do so.

To date the Italian’s wages must look like money well spent from the point of view of his employers but the association’s attitude is likely to be dictated in the end by how this group turns out for, with a lot of 10-year tickets still unsold and their share of a stadium to pay for, the stakes have never been higher for the guardians of Irish football.

And how the group turns out, as Trapattoni keeps pointing out, will depend to a considerable extent on “the little details.”

Kevin Kilbane’s momentary lapse in concentration on Saturday night was just such a detail but Trapattoni goes to great lengths to deflect blame from his left back, using the example of a goal conceded previously to argue, it seems, that the more closely you look at and analyse a goal the more widespread you see that the responsibility for it really was.

Then he reminds us that he has been there, done that too. “That was my job on pitch,” he says “Pele, Cruyff, Eusebio,” he looks around suddenly as awakened from a daydream and waves “bye bye”.

“It’s not unusual,” he adds. “I give them what I know, what I can teach them, it’s important they understand that. It was the same at Inter and Juventus. When players believe in their jobs, what their manager asks them to do, the result is positive.

“That’s the greatest satisfaction. They need to understand the importance of their engagement, of 90 minutes without rest. I felt it was important to thank them because they have to understand that they have earned it.”