SOCCER:THE IRELAND squad touched down in Yerevan last night with Giovanni Trapattoni still not quite sure about who will partner Glenn Whelan in central midfield as his team kicks off its bid to qualify for the next European Championship finals.
Prior to departing for the airport yesterday morning the squad trained in Malahide where the Italian again reviewed his options, this time taking the opportunity to have a look at Manchester United’s Darron Gibson in the role.
Afterwards, however, he conceded it is still Paul Green he is leaning towards, although it is unlikely he will make a final decision before training at the host city’s Republican stadium this evening.
“Paul is confident, he has good personality, he’s fast, he’s quick and I like his mentality,” said Trapattoni prior to joining his players for the start of the journey.
“We have other players and today I tried Gibson with Whelan. I’m sure I can change but today I can say 60 per cent it will be Green.”
The manager expressed confidence that Darren O’Dea would recover sufficiently from the knee injury picked up earlier in the week to play some part tomorrow evening if required and the defender did travel yesterday.
Also on board but still less than 100 per cent, apparently, was Richard Dunne who sat out the bulk of training yesterday due to what Trapattoni described somewhat vaguely as a “muscle” injury.
“Dunne still has this knock in the muscle,” he said, “but he made a little circle (did some light running around the pitch). It is a precaution, he prefer to work tomorrow. He will train with us then.”
Despite the injury concerns, Trapattoni remains confident about the outcome against the Armenians but insists his players need to remain focused and, as they did over the course of the last campaign, avoid the sort of carelessness that could come back to haunt them further on down the line when the likes of Russia and Slovakia have to be faced.
“I have two days to inform the players and we will see them (the Armenians) in two or three games. At home they are hard, they make an impression. It’s no excuse but they can also provoke us. We must be calm and play with this mentality, like last year, in the last campaign, where we went without suspension.”
First in the queue, he’ll feel meanwhile, in the event that Dunne somehow isn’t fit to start tomorrow is Fulham’s Stephen Kelly, whose performances in the early summer wins over Paraguay and Algeria have lent some weight to his case for a more regular place in the Ireland team.
Kelly, who turns 27 next Monday, has played 18 times for his country since making his debut against Chile in May 2006, but less than a third of those outings have been in competitive games.
This time around, he looks likely to lose out again, with John O’Shea expected to revert to the right back position as Sean St Ledger returns alongside Dunne but the Dubliner could still make the cut if Dunne misses out or Trapattoni decides to start with either the Preston defender or Kevin Kilbane on the bench.
He certainly approaches Ireland’s first European qualifier with a good deal of confidence thanks to a decent start to the new league campaign in England with his club. Kelly has featured in all of Fulham’s games to date and looks set to benefit from the departure of Paul Konchesky to Liverpool and the arrival of Mark Hughes, a manager he says he is already enjoying working with.
“Of course everything that happened under Roy (Hodgson) was fantastic,” he says, “it was a legendary season and will be in the rest of the club’s history, it was amazing how far he took the club in the small amount of time he was there. But everybody’s really embraced the new manager, embraced his style and embraced the way we’re training, just really jumped at it and enjoyed it.
“The last few weeks, since he’s been in charge, for me personally it’s been excellent; I’m enjoying everything about it.”
Whether this week proves as rewarding for the defender remains to be seen but Kelly admits his Ireland career so far has been what might be described as sporadic and he is keen to make more of an impact as he moves into what should be the best years of his career.
“I just think the fact that I’ve been in the squad a long time . . . I’d have liked to have played more games. But you’re representing your country so you take it on the chin a little bit better (when you’re not selected) than you do when you’re at your club.
“Playing for Ireland, for me, is indescribable really; it doesn’t compare to anything else football-wise. Yeah, playing for your club is fantastic and you love it, but when you go and play for Ireland there’s just something so special about it, when you pull on that green jersey.
“I know people say it all the time, it’s very clichéd, but there really is something special about it. It’s amazing, and for me every time I get to do it I embrace it as much as I can. I hope now there’s a chance for me to cement a position in the team, make it more permanent.”
