SEÁN SCANNELL, the 17-year-old Crystal Palace winger, admitted to having spent much of the past week pinching himself, struggling to take in his elevation to the senior international ranks and his inclusion in the squad for the games against Serbia and Colombia.

He wasn't the only one, though, engaging in such self-harm, the sight of Giovanni Trapattoni, Marco Tardelli and Liam Brady at work with the Irish players in the Algarve the last week having a certain pinch-yourself quality to it for any of the observers looking on.

Perhaps the dissenting voices who have regarded Trapattoni and his team's appointment less than ecstatically will be proved right in the end, maybe it will all come to nothing, but for now even the world weariest of Irish football supporters must surely be enthused by the Trinity's guiding and directing of these players, and intrigued by where it all might lead.

Scannell, whose father Brendan is from Armagh and his mother Cecilia from Jamaica, was asked during the week for his earliest memory of watching Ireland in action. "It was against Spain in the 2002 World Cup, I watched it at home with my dad," he said. For Scannell, then, 2002 is history; for most of the rest of us it's current affairs.

So for Scannell and the other youthful members of the squad Trapattoni, Tardelli and Brady might just be names - that glorious Tardelli goal celebration, for example, when he scored against West Germany in the World Cup final, came 20 years before Scannell's earliest footballing memory — but they gave the impression in Portugal that they were fully aware of the combined histories of their new mentors and their achievements in the game. "If we can't learn from these people we won't learn from anyone," was their mantra for the week.

That, too, was the gist of Dean Kiely's reasoning for why he returned to the fold five years after retiring from international football, his enthusiasm for working with the trio boyishly similar to Scannell's . . . who is 20 years his junior.

"When you're in and around quality people, people who know football and who have done such great things in world football, it can only benefit you, you can only learn from it. It's interesting and stimulating to be on the same training ground as the new management team," he said. "For me, you never stop learning, so to see how different people do things, it's exciting."

And the learning never stops. Trapattoni spent a good portion of last Sunday's training game against Portimonense with his back to the action, not because elements of the display might have prompted him to avert his eyes, because he was talking to the substitutes through the game. Any plans they might have had to drift off and indulge in a spot of day-dreaming had to be shelved, the manager was demanding their undivided attention.

At one point in the game the ball was hoofed aimlessly upfield from the Irish defence, under no significant pressure, returning possession to the Portuguese second division side, an action evidently so unpardonable for the Italian he shared his fury with the bench, his gesticulations - picture a cross between a windmill in overdrive and a traffic policeman on the Red Cow roundabout when the lights have failed - so frenzied the substitutes must surely have got the message: refrain from hoofing the ball aimlessly upfield when you're under no pressure.

Paul McShane, who has worked under Alex Ferguson and, now, Roy Keane in his club career, described Trapattoni as his most "hands-on" coach yet, talking of his "attention to detail" and how "we'll work on a throw-in for half an hour". "He's great for the young lads because he pulls them aside and tells them what to work on, he's out on the pitch every day and is telling us exactly what he wants. I think that's fantastic. Every player knows what is expected of him."

When asked for examples of what specifically Trapattoni had asked the players to work on during the week McShane's response was, perhaps, an insight into the manager's belief that his new charges' technique is less than it should be for players at senior international level. "Controlling the ball, bringing it down by the side of your body — and when you receive the ball there's the little thing of lifting your foot up when you are controlling it," he said.

The manager has, though, resisted publicly bemoaning his players' shortcomings in those areas, instead endlessly praising their desire and ability to listen and learn all week, and, above all, their "attitude and mentality".

Indeed, if Ireland gain as many points in the forthcoming World Cup qualifying games as the number of times Trapattoni acclaimed his players' "mentality" in Portugal then his squad is South Africa-bound.

Considering most players display as much enthusiasm for these end-of-season get-togethers as they do for dental visits the manager's evident joy at their approach to the week in Portugal was encouraging, not least because so many of them - including the just relegated Reading (Kevin Doyle, Stephen Hunt and Shane Long) and Birmingham (Stephen Kelly) players - had endured such miserable ends to the season that they can hardly have had a spring in their steps when they reported for international duty.

McShane, Liam Miller and Damien Duff, too, can't have been in high spirits after seasons they will want to erase from their memories.

But in their first full week together Trapattoni appears to have drawn from his players the enthusiasm and work-rate he had hoped for, and demanded. Those looking on might pinch themselves enough to numb any sense of inflated optimism, for fear of disappointment ahead, but still Trapattoni cries "Greece, Greece, Greece!" to remind us that anything's possible.