With Croatia likely to flood midfield, the Stoke player may yet get a chance in Sunday’s opener

GIOVANNI TRAPATTONI may have to shoulder some of the blame for the shortcomings in a performance on Monday night that prompted talk of an 11th hour tactical rethink but the Italian never seemed likely to change a system he has staked so much on at this point.

At his press conference immediately after the scoreless draw in Budapest, Trapattoni made the rare admission that his side had been lucky to get out of the Puskas Ferenc Stadium with another clean sheet and their long unbeaten record intact.

Yesterday, he said that after looking at a rerun of the game things weren’t as bad as he had initially thought, but he did admit to some problems and tried to suggest that they may have been contributed to by the weather-induced delay.

When it was put to him that both Aiden McGeady and Keith Andrews had alluded to feeling slightly tired on the night after a couple of tough weeks in training, Trapattoni laughed and described Montecatini as a “holiday” for his men. (That was before it was announced that the team would not train today, but would rest instead.)

Rather, Trapattoni insisted that what is required is for the team’s strikers to apply themselves to their task a little more industriously. If that deprives his team of a little cutting edge then it is the responsibility, he said, of the wingers to pose more of a threat to the opposition’s goal. In Italy, he maintained, players like McGeady and Damien Duff would be expected to score a lot more goals.

But then the reality is, that at this late stage of the day, there really is nothing else for the Italian to do but implore his men to try a little harder. When there was time to cast around for alternatives he quickly decided against an exhaustive search because of the way in which it would, he clearly felt, disrupt his work with the team.

Monday’s encounter was a little reminiscent of the second of Ireland’s group games against Russia, with some of the defending and goalkeeping bordering on inspired – as it had to be – but with a significantly greater element of good fortune.

The team emerged with an 11th clean sheet in what is now a run of 14 games unbeaten but Trapattoni’s opposite number, Sandor Egevari, must surely have been dismayed that his side, and lone striker Adam Szalai in particular, failed to put away even one chance on the night.

His team’s inability to properly cope with the tactic employed by the Hungarians has, however, been well known to Trapattoni since the first of the encounters with Russia, when the visitors ran riot for the first hour of their win in Dublin back in October 2010.

Two of Ireland’s next four games were friendlies – against Norway and Wales – and Trapattoni did use both to experiment, most notably at left back where he was searching for a replacement for Kevin Kilbane and up front where, in the absence of Robbie Keane, he took a closer look at combinations of Kevin Doyle, Shane Long and Jonathan Walters, perhaps with a specific view to finding a way for one of the front men to lend more of a hand in midfield when the need arose.

It was the Uruguay game in March of last year, however, before the 73-year-old went the whole hog and played a fifth midfielder. James McCarthy was reckoned to have disappointed in the role, the team lost (the last time it did) and the system was shelved, at least until the friendly against Italy in Liege, when the coach reverted to asking a striker – Andy Keogh – to place a particular emphasis on dropping deep to provide cover. The Dubliner won many plaudits for the job he did of limiting Andrea Pirlo’s influence, not least from the manager, but as it turned out, it wasn’t enough to keep him in the squad.

Now, the real threat to the established first choice players would appear to come from Jonathan Walters and there seems to be a decent case for playing the 29-year-old in a role he often fulfils for Stoke City, particularly after his performance as a substitute in the last two games.

Certainly that would seem a more plausible shift in direction than adding either Darron Gibson or Paul Green to his midfield at the expense of either Doyle or Keane. There is no chance, in any case, of the Italian dropping his skipper and little sense in abandoning a system which, he observed only last week, his players are so used to at this stage they could play it with their eyes closed. Instead, his two first choice players are simply going to be asked to play the Keogh role, if you will.

Almost certainly, though, he must coax an improvement out of whatever 11 he fields on Sunday, for Slaven Bilic is pretty pragmatic when it comes to his formations and has used one or other of a couple of different five-man midfield formations quite a few times over the last couple of years.

He already was, as Trapattoni himself acknowledged on Sunday, likely to be highly familiar with all of Ireland’s strengths and weaknesses. But having watched the game in Budapest on Monday, it is hard to imagine he will resist the temptation to densely populate his midfield, an approach that may seem more attractive after his own striking options were hit by the loss of the hugely experienced Ivica Olic.

Bilic suggested, not unreasonably, that he sees the Irish game as one his side must target for a win and, if Trapattoni does not do the same in relation to Sunday’s encounter, then his men are likely to face Italy needing to win to progress to the semi-finals.

Many of his players made much of the team’s long unbeaten record on Monday night and it is undoubtedly a good thing to bring into the tournament. To have gone this long without being beaten is certainly no fluke and perhaps they really can get through this group by simply upping the intensity of their efforts in particular departments.

There’s no surely no shame in admitting, though, that a little more luck might go a long way too.

IRISHTIMES.COM

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