Trapattoni opts for a radical overhaul

SOCCER:THE FAI'S policy of bundling tickets for games may have its critics but, to be fair, they're consistent about it; just ask the rather bewildered Macedonian reporters who received press passes for Saturday's game last week only to discover that admission to tonight's encounter at the Aviva stadium came as part of the deal.

Not many, one suspects, have hung around to enjoy the spectacle but then neither have most of the Ireland players who featured against their team over the weekend. For Robbie Keane and co at least, the association is prepared to make an exception.

The upshot is, that with Glenn Whelan and Mark Wilson having joined the stampede of local players who have returned to their clubs, Giovanni Trapattoni has named a dramatically different starting line-up for this evening’s meeting with a South American side that will include a remarkable nine of the starting line-up from the World Cup third place play-off against Germany in Port Elizabeth last summer.

New captain, Stephen Kelly comes into a relatively unchanged defence for what will be his 21st appearance for his country but in midfield and attack it is a case of “all change” with Trapattoni opting, even where he could have stuck with Saturday’s starters, to make a clean sweep.

More surprisingly, Trapattoni has even decided to tinker with his formation, playing James McCarthy between a lone striker, Shane Long, and his midfield, a role that he hopes might afford the 20 year-old an opportunity to come out of his shell in these new surroundings.

“I’ve told him to call for the ball, to be vocal” said the manager yesterday, “and that if he makes mistakes it’s alright. He is a little shy and he must get over that.”

The role being handed to McCarthy is something of an experiment by the 72-year-old coach, who said yesterday he hopes to further develop his options in friendlies against, most likely Italy in New York on June 11th and, he suggested, possibly Mexico in the likes of Washington, Philadelphia, Boston or Toronto a few days earlier.

Neither the opposition nor the dates are confirmed yet but Trapattoni remains keen on the trip, believing the sort of slightly peripheral players who will start tonight could benefit from the experience and so broaden his options. In the short term, though, little enough will change.

Those players face a difficult task against such a strong Uruguayan line-up this evening but the Italian predicts the likes of John O’Shea, Damien Duff and Keane will all return for the trip to Macedonia.

Richard Dunne will miss the qualifier through suspension and Kevin Doyle looks far more of a doubt after scans showed yesterday he has torn his medial ligament, although there was no rupture and the damage was not as serious as first feared.

The head of Wolves’s medical department, Steve Kemp, said:

“We will be working with Kevin to get him back as quickly as the injury allows but the likely timespan is anywhere between four and eight weeks.”

What the coach has somewhat more control over is the formation that will be employed in Skopje and, while gently mocking the reporters at yesterday’s pre-match press conference in Malahide about what he sees as an obsession over “the numbers”, he stated emphatically he will revert to 4-4-2 because, it seems, he essentially believes the system is part of the DNA of players brought up through the ranks of the British or Irish game.

Sure enough, the assembled media did briefly seem a little embarrassed about the ongoing formations debate and there were few further questions about it than last week.

Still, the reporters gained a small measure of revenge when Trapattoni initially rattled off a sequence of numbers for tonight that suggested he only intended to field 10 men and it was the manager who was red-faced when it had to be pointed out to him by his translator it was probably “wingers” rather than “swingers” that he meant to suggest English football enjoys an abundance of.

To be fair to him, though, it’s had its fair share of both types over the years.

Given the loss of so many other prominent players, the decision to leave both Aiden McGeady and Darron Gibson on the bench for this evening’s encounter is something of a surprise but it does mean Keith Fahey will get an opportunity to exert a positive influence on things from central midfield from the outset.

Having drifted towards the margins a bit over the last year or two, Andy Keogh gets a start out on the left, while Liam Lawrence returns on the right, charged with the task of getting behind the Uruguayan defence and hopefully providing Long with ammunition around the edges of the six -yard box.

The Reading striker was a little subdued on Saturday and the concern this evening is he might be left looking a little stranded if McCarthy is obliged, like the midfield four, to get stuck in on the defensive side of things.

It might be Kelly, Darren O’Dea and Ciarán Clark at the back then who get the real opportunity to play their way into the manager’s thinking for Macedonia.

Against South Americans who outscored Brazil, Argentina and, of course, the eventual winners Spain at the World Cup, though, the hope is they won’t end up regretting it.