Goal: Trapattoni Prepares For New Challenge In Ireland

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By Jack Bell

Tags: Austria, giovanni trapattoni, red bulls

SALZBURG, Austria — At a spry 68 years old, with sparkling eyes, Giovanni Trapattoni said he is ready for a new challenge — taking the national team of Ireland to a place it has not been since 2002, the World Cup.

“At the moment I think, for me, Ireland is like this team in Austria when I arrived,” Trapattoni said Wednesday night, referring to his team, Red Bull Salzburg. “They are at the moment not good. They need someone they can trust and I think I can work there to help their quality.”

Candid and often animated, Trapattoni stalked the Red Bull sideline at Wals-Siezenheim stadium in a finely tailored blue suit even though the temperature was near-freezing on a day that brought nearly 6 inches of snow. With a 2-0 victory over Wacker Innsbruck, his club team vaulted back into first place in the T-Mobile Bundesliga with 11 matches to play. When the season ends, Trapattoni will leave the city where Mozart was born and decamp for Ireland and his new job.

“Until May I will stay here,” he said, in heavily accented and slightly broken English. “We will win the season, then I will have to go to Ireland and prepare.”

Trapattoni has had a long and interesting career as a soccer coach, leading nine different club teams (three of them at different times) and the Italian national team. It has not been without controversy.

After two seasons at A.C. Milan in his native Italy (where he was a player from 1959-71), Trapattoni took Juventus to six titles in Serie A. He accepted his first job outside Italy in the mid-1990’s, moving to Bayern Munich in Germany, returning to Italy with Cagliari for season, then jumping back to Bayern for the 1994-95 season. During that second stint in the Bavarian capital, Trapattoni delighted and amused during an animated news conference on March 10, 1998, where he criticized a number of players and vowed they would never play for him again. They did and he was gone after the season.

After two seasons at Fiorentina, Trapattoni took over as the coach of the Italian national team, embarking on a journey from the certainty and routine of a club coach to the often variable and disjointed life of a national team guru.

“There is a big difference, because with teams you can do things every day,” he said. “The exercise, mentality and control, the conditioning are up to you. With a national team, the players come from other teams and you only have a few days with them. It is not an easy job. Whether it is England, Italy, Ireland or Austria, there is a very big difference.”

With the Italian national team, Trapattoni presided over a disastrous and controversial exit from the 2002 World Cup, losing to one of the co-hosts, South Korea, in the second round of the tournament. Two years later, the Italians were again a major disappointment, this time failing to advance past the first round at the European Championships in Portugal. And Trapattoni was out of a job, but not for long — coaching Benfica in Portugal, Stuttgart in Germany and now Red Bull in Salzburg, where the company of the same name that owns the team is hellbent on forging a global sports empire that includes soccer, auto racing and extreme sports to help sell its energy drink.

Now, with Ireland, Trapattoni is following in the footsteps of his compatriot Fabio Capello, who recently accepted the unenviable task of leading the national team of underachieving England.

“It is different for the players from England — they are famous,” Trapattoni said. “In Ireland, I am a little lucky because there are some 15 players in the top league in England. So I think they know of international football. But I will need their trust because their last result was not very good [Ireland failed to qualify for this summer’s European Championship tournament in Austria and Switzerland]. It is a young team and this is a very important moment.”

Really a fascinating twist in the world of international coaching. I really wish the US team would consider rounding up the dough to bring in a successful International Coach. I think Bradley is good enough but I dont think he has the experience to take the US to the next level. Soccer is not Australia’s main sport and they found the funds to bring in Hiddink, why cant we?

http://futbolinks.blogspot.com

†Posted by bill

You make a good point Bill but I think we should let American soccer develop at it’s own pace with Americans.

If we brought in Capello, can you really say we’d be contenders for the next World Cup? I don’t think so and I think Bradley has done a good job so far.

†Posted by Fernando

I agree with Fernando - let Bradley and the US coaching staff LEARN how to coach at the international level. This will require patience on our part - but its worth it if we hope to have a competitive national team. Regrettably, the US Women’s team just hired a Swede to be their coach. I’s sure this new coach is eminently qualified but it’s wrong for at least two reasons: 1)it prevents the development of a national style from developing (since it merely imports the ideas and traditions of another country) which sort of violates the whole reason for competition between nations at the international level and 2) it prevents a well-qualified US coach from gaining the knowledge and experience of coaching at that level (who would also be able to experiment with his/her own ideas that reflect the amalgam of American experience and bring that distinctive soccer to international play).

This is the long program. The short cut is simply to import all the Brazilian coaches available and play their style. Not a bad idea either.

†Posted by Raymond

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Goal, The New York Times soccer blog, will report on news and features from the world of soccer and around the Web. Times editors and reporters will follow international tournaments and provide analysis of games. There will be interviews with players, coaches and notable soccer fans, as well as a weekly blog column by Red Bulls forward Jozy Altidore. Readers can discuss Major League Soccer, foreign leagues and other issues with fellow soccer fans.

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