FRIENDLY MATCH Shamrock Rovers v Real Madrid: WITH MORE than 15 days having passed now since the club spent an eight-figure sum on a player, almost everyone at Real Madrid is likely to welcome the distraction of an actual game of football this evening.

For Manuel Pellegrini, though, the encounter with Shamrock Rovers in Tallaght marks the start of his rather daunting work to make all the pieces of the sporting world’s most expensive jigsaw puzzle fit together. Needless to say, the price of failure, like everything else when Florentino Perez is involved, will be high.

The match itself matters little to either side but the Spanish media will pick over the Chilean’s selection and (most likely) many changes with a fine-tooth comb for signs of how the club’s new coach is going to accommodate the galaxy of stars he has had nothing to do with assembling. There are close to 25 players available for selection this evening while the likes of Kaka, Sergio Ramos, Iker Casillas and Raul Albiol will come into the reckoning over the next week or two.

It’s far from clear who will start or come on for Real this evening but it is firmly expected that both Cristiano Ronaldo and Karim Benzema will make their debuts for the club while Ruud van Nistelrooy and Mahamadou Diarra, both recovering from serious knee injuries, are far less likely to feature.

Otherwise, Pellegrini pretty much has two players available for each position, many very well known, most world class, and the coach may well give a run out to almost all of them.

In the circumstances, it’s not entirely surprising then that Rovers boss Michael O’Neill speaks about the game with more than a hint of bemusement, laughing off the idea that any one in the host camp has given any real thought to the idea of trying to win and insisting that he has told his players to “have fun, relax and not worry about the result”.

The encounter might have left a sour taste with O’Neill and everyone else at the club had Saturday’s game against Sligo at Tolka Park not been won. And there will a good deal of lingering concern that the occasion has highlighted their council landlord’s willingness to put the club’s competitive ambitions a distant second when it comes to preparing for a high-profile event.

As it is, though, things have turned out well enough.

Rovers defeated Sligo – the only surprise being that Gary Twigg didn’t score, they’ll get a decent-sized payday for providing the opposition this evening, and the players will get to play in front of 11,000 spectators, a significant portion of whom, it is to be hoped, will actually be cheering them on.

“Look, it doesn’t have any value from a football point of view,” observes O’Neill, “it’s not going to affect us as a football team or tell us anything we don’t know but it’s important for Tallaght and the club as a whole . . . for Shamrock Rovers in Tallaght.

“It’s a reward for some of the people who have worked so hard to get things to this stage and it’s a bit of a reward for the effort the players have put in to get to play some of the best players in the world.”

O’Neill, as he did with the visit of Newcastle United a week ago, will look to give runs to a couple of players coming back from injury with Darragh Maguire and Pádraig Amond both likely to start and, as likely as not, feature for the entire 90 minutes.

After that, he says, there will be plenty of changes from Saturday’s line-up but just about everybody involved in the squad will get to kick a ball at some stage over the course of the night.

“We’ll have a look at things,” he says, “but it’s a big ask to start games on a Saturday and a Monday night so there’ll be changes alright. Some lads play more times than others and that will influence the team selection but I know how much everyone wants to be a part of the occasion and that will play a part in my thinking although the main consideration is the importance of not coming out of this with injured players.”

Such consideration routinely reduce encounters like this to polite and rather excruciating strolls with teams avoiding almost any physical contact but O’Neill insists no attempt to lay down ground rules has been made by either club. “They’ve come here and presumably feel they’re ready for a game or presumably they wouldn’t have agreed to play one,” he says. “The more competitive these things are the more beneficial they are generally and we’ll certainly be looking to make a game of it.”

*Platinum One, the game's organisers, have warned that some road closures will be in operation around Tallaght Stadium this evening. The match kicks off at 8pm and the company warns admittance can not be guaranteed to those arriving less than half an hour in advance of the start time.