BUILDING CONFIDENCE rather than expanding choice will be uppermost in Giovanni Trapattoni’s mind when he names his squad for the March 2nd friendly against Brazil in London, most likely on Monday week.

The Italian says that he is anxious that the team gets a result against the five times world champions so as to maintain a positive run of strong showings against major powers of the world game. Any rebuilding of the squad to be done ahead of the start of the Euro 2012 campaign in the autumn, will be put on hold until May when Ireland are set to play two more friendlies to be followed, it seems increasingly possible, by a warm-weather training camp.

This would be similar to the one in Portugal a little over 18 months ago, when Trapattoni made his assessments of the players available to him which were to prove critical to his team selections in the recent World Cup qualifying campaign.

The coach still regularly mentions, when asked, how Andy Reid dealt his cause a considerable blow by missing the trip to Portugal and it is persistently speculated upon that the manager did not believe the Dubliner was injured, as he claimed, when withdrawing from that trip.

What is clear, however, is that the squad that gathers in London on February 28th, ahead of the game in the Emirates, will be very much the same one that split up after the heartbreak of the play-off lost to France with Trapattoni out to maintain the marked improvement that was seen in some of the team’s bigger games towards the end of last year.

“We wish to achieve the result against Brazil because then we would have (done well against) Italy, France and Brazil,” says the veteran coach.

“That would be important for us.” Asked if any new players would be added to the panel; he replied: “Sure, one or two new players, but I think the squad that played against France in the qualifying game deserve to stay . . . maybe O’Shea is injured, I don’t think he can play.

“But otherwise I think it’s better to have the same team with one or two new options, not too many. The young or the others can come in the summer. Next week, or the week after, we will speak with John (Delaney) and we will prepare the games. Sure, we will play two matches against . . . we have many options. Maybe also in the summer, there will be a week or 10 days like we had in the first year in Portugal or another country for these young players, new players, option players. It would be something that would give me the opportunity to look at everyone, because that is important.”

Despite all the talk of new players, Trapattoni, like Marco Tardelli last week, brushed aside talk of the various English under-21s who became eligible to declare for Ireland as a result of changes to the Fifa statutes last year.

He preferred instead to concentrate on the likes of defenders Seamus Coleman and Greg Cunningham at Everton and Manchester City respectively (who have just a handful of first team appearances between them) and Wigan’s James McCarthy, who has started to become more established at the Premier League outfit of late after a move last summer from Hamilton Academical.

“It’s not just McCarthy,” he said. “There are others. McCarthy yes but also O’Hara, Cunningham, Coleman. We have many 21 or 22.”

But the Italian’s attitude to a couple of the players remains, despite various attempts to clarify it, unclear. He seems to be cool enough regarding McCarthy and entirely unruffled by reports in the British media that new Scotland manager Craig Levein might approach the teenager to switch his international allegiance back to the country of his birth.

Trapattoni implies that while something is going on behind the scenes, it is better not to draw attention to the situation and so, he says, he prefers not to talk about McCarthy’s situation at all.

Similarly, questions about Jamie O’Hara, the Spurs and former England under-21 international midfielder, currently on loan at Portsmouth, yield little clarity although there appears to be some suggestion that the speculation linking them with Ireland might be causing the likes O’Hara and Kevin Nolan some difficulties at club level.

In any case, the upshot is that Trapattoni’s intentions for the next campaign will not really be any clearer until the start of the summer.

His scheduled squad announcement for the Brazil game might yet be affected by a possible change to the date for the European Championship qualification group fixtures meeting. It had been provisionally set for January 20th in Bratislava but could now be held in Moscow on the 22nd, the same day Trapattoni is supposed to be in Dublin for a press conference.

The Italian will almost certainly not travel to the meeting but the association would want him to be easily contactable by phone at all times so as to play a part in negotiations aimed at securing a favourable schedule.