SOCCER:GIOVANNI Trapattoni expressed surprise yesterday that John O'Shea had risked more serious injury by playing for Sunderland against Manchester United on the final day of the Premier League season last Sunday.

However, if it turns out to be the most reckless thing any of his players do before or during Euro 2012 then the Republic of Ireland manager will feel he got away lightly.

O’Shea is not due to start training until Monday and has apparently indicated that he expects to be able to do so despite the recurrence of a calf injury.

Still, the Italian gently took issue with his decision to participate in what was, from his current club’s point of view, a rather meaningless end-of-season encounter; albeit one on which the outcome of the title race depended.

“I was in touch with him,” said the Italian after the first 10 of his men to arrive at the team’s initial training went through a light workout, “and he said he is not too bad. It’s a muscle injury and the scan suggests it was not bad.

“But I said him ‘you already had this little injury and Sunderland don’t need to be a little bit up the table’ but we need the players. It was silly, a bit naive of him to play. Sunderland were safe and he didn’t need to.”

Though they are sure to be less central to his plans for the group games against Croatia, Spain and Italy next month, the more obvious concerns on the training pitch yesterday were Keith Fahey and Kevin Foley, both of whom worked with the squad’s physios for most of what was a fairly short session.

Both have arrived from their clubs with minor problems and both, it seems, will have to take it easy until some time next week, but Trapattoni dismissed any suggestion that they might be left behind when the squad heads for Italy on Sunday week.

“No, they will come with us. We have time before we have to give the final list to Uefa and if there are injuries we can change the squad according to the rules, if we have the injury we can change the list of the squad. But they will be okay I think.

“Foley (hamstring) and Fahey (groin) are a little bit injured,” he continued. “But the doctor thinks that maybe in a week or 10 days they will be fit. They are both important for us. They could also stay at their clubs but we can see what happens here with our physio and doctor.”

Given that the pair’s involvement was so limited and that two of the other players to have touched down so far (Keiren Westwood and David Forde) are goalkeepers, Trapattoni only has six outfield players with whom he can work at present, including the much-hyped James McClean.

Nevertheless, Trapattoni stood by his decision to bring this group in ahead of the main contingent.

“There are two or three new players with us,” he said, “like McClean. He has played well, we have seen that many times but we have a system and here he can see what we are asking of him because the solution for us is different to the one at his club.

“He is a good player and a strong personality but he needs to work with us to understand what we want. We couldn’t say to him to come on the 20th, have a game a few days later and then tell him what to do because he would ask ‘why?’”

Simon Cox, meanwhile, was one of the players to arrive yesterday armed with box sets of television series and a slight sense of trepidation.

The striker said that he is hoping to make an impact at the championships in whatever way he can so as to impress Trapattoni, the new West Brom manager and any others who might be watching and might provide him with options in the event that Roy Hodgson’s successor at the Hawthorns doesn’t see a significant role for him.

The former Reading player may have to acquire a slightly harder edge when it comes to making his case for inclusion.

Trapattoni has repeatedly suggested that he sees Cox primarily as a Robbie Keane type of player and one, therefore, who is unlikely to play alongside the team’s captain.

Clearly, he is unlikely to displace Keane and will probably have to settle for replacing him in games or standing in for him, but he still might have been expected to stop short of arguing for his rival to start.

“He’s (Keane) a really great servant of the country and a very good player,” said Cox yesterday.

“For me, he should play every game because he’s the sort of player who will sniff a goal out from anywhere.”