It is not tactics, but the character of his players that Giovanni Trapattoni believes is most important in international football, writes Ken Early.
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When Giovanni Trapattoni took over as Ireland manager, he talked a lot about Greece. It had been four years since the dour Greek team won Euro 2004, but Trap was still excited by their organisation, belief, “mentality”. They had shown how to be successful in international football.
At the time, this was disappointing to hear. Nobody really wants to watch a side that plays like Greece, especially not Irish fans, many of whom unconsciously wish soccer was a bit more like hurling. The idea of the Irish team lining up in a dense defensive phalanx with one minotaur-like forward to butt crosses into the net did not arouse universal delight.
It turns out we were taking Trapattoni too literally. He didn’t want to imitate the Greek tactics. He doesn’t really care about tactics at all. Football for him is a test of character. We know this because he told us last Thursday that the way he sees it, Greece are like Spain.
Last Thursday, the man from the Sun asked whether Ireland might in future play more like they did in the Stade de France. Was it just a coincidence that the most attacking performance since he took over was also the best? Trapattoni began to ramble about the World Cup. Some teams – “Brazil, Argentina mit violino, play beautiful football, go at home. Why? German – four-nil, four-nil! Go at home.”
You wondered what the ultimate point would be: wasn’t the World Cup won by the team that played the most beautiful football of all? But that’s not what Trap noticed about Spain.
As the tools for measuring football multiply, analysis of the game has become more technical. This summer the world pored over amazing Spanish stats: Xavi’s total passes, Busquets’ pass completion, Alonso’s kilometres per game, Villa’s chance conversion ratio. For Trapattoni, one stat stood out: “One-nil, one-nil, one-nil, one-nil. One-nil!”
He (Trapattoni) doesn’t really care about tactics at all. Football for him is a test of character.
Most people believe Spain won because they had the best passing footballers in the world. Trap believes Spain, like their superficial opposites Greece, won because they had “great personality”. In his view, football is about imposing yourself on the opposition. Tactics, even technical ability: secondary. All he would say to the Irish media about tactics was: “You can ask what is better to do? This or this? At the moment this we can do, this we cannot do. But we cannot say ‘Baaaa! Baaaa!'”
It’s not that Trapattoni puts no thought into how the team should play. Ireland had a different game-plan for each qualifier: aerial bombardment against Armenia, short passing and dribbling against Andorra. But unlike tactical purists like Marcelo Bielsa or Louis van Gaal, who fit players to a system and invariably aim to play the same way, Trapattoni is a pragmatist, who does whatever he thinks will work. What really interests him is building and sustaining a collective identity.
This is one reason why he always likes to pick the same team. “The Italian Bill Shankly” is how Liam Brady described him, not “the Italian Rafa Benitez.” It also explains why he picks diligent team men like Glenn Whelan and Paul Green ahead of obviously more talented individuals like Andy Reid and Darron Gibson. The most interesting sub-plot of the week just gone concerns Gibson’s continued exclusion and how he’s dealing with it.
Plainly, Trapattoni doesn’t consider Gibson’s impressive shooting compensates for his inability to impose himself in midfield. Last weekend he suggested the player should leave Manchester United and go somewhere he could improve through playing: “He plays beautiful football. But with United, when they play the other teams, I think they are afraid. It would be important for him to go to another team, to get hunger.”
Gibson’s retort came the next day in the Belfast Telegraph: “If Trapattoni wants me to move on from a club like Manchester United to better my game, move to somewhere like Stoke where I’ll get more games, but have little chance of winning anything, then I just don’t know. Where else would I go from Manchester United? At what club, other than Manchester United, could I go to improve my game? To be honest, if he’s trying to say that I should move somewhere like Stoke City and change my game to winning tackles and not winning games, then he’s having a laugh.”
The response was interesting for the frosty tone and the undiplomatic choice of Glenn Whelan’s club, Stoke City, as an example of nowheresville. If Stoke are so hopeless you wonder what he thinks of Derby, the Championship club of Green, a recent and by no means spectacular arrival who is now blocking Gibson’s path to the team. This has got to be hurting Gibson.
Of course, Trapattoni doesn’t want him to “win tackles and not win games”. Trapattoni just wants him to play games. Alex Ferguson has buttered Gibson up with compliments but his actions are telling a different story. Gibson hasn’t played a minute of United’s four matches so far. From Ferguson’s point of view, he is an ideal backup player. Every squad needs a few Prufrocks: ‘an easy tool, deferential, glad to be of use’. If Gibson settles for that with his club, he can’t expect much more with his country.
