Paddy Agnewbelieves Giovanni Trapattoni will be keen to build his Irish team, as usual, on a sound defensive foundation

For many years now, most Italian football fans have tended to look on the Republic of Ireland's new manager, Giovanni Trapattoni, as nothing less than the high priest of catenaccio. He is not the first or last Italian coach to send out a team that knows how to defend but when it comes to "copperfastening" the result, no one does it better than Trap.

It was in that context then that, just after he had been appointed Italy coach in July 2000, sports daily Gazzetta Dello Sport asked him a leading question. Which do you prefer, getting the result or playing well?

It was not quite an "are-you-still-beating-the-wife" question, but it was close. Trap's not unexpected answer was revealing: "I remember (coach) Fulvio Bernardini's Bologna team (1961-65). For two years people went around saying that a side can play that well, only in heaven. But they didn't win anything. In the third season, they didn't play nearly so well but they won the title . . . If you play badly but you get a result, you have to thank God. The result is very important."

As someone who grew up under the tutelage of AC Milan coach Nereo Rocco, Trap has always been portrayed as a flag- bearer for the catenaccio way. Rocco practised a very defensive game and furthermore was famous for sayings such as: "Let's hope it's a good game but that the better team doesn't win."

Back in 1989, the season in which Trapattoni won the Serie A title with Inter Milan, the late Gianni Brera, an outstanding football writer of his day, was asked about Trapattoni. Was he really the inheritor of the Rocco tradition? "Of course. And he is so in relation to a pretty fundamental rule, namely that when you build a house, you start with the foundations not the roof. Rocco and then Trapattoni have always built their sides on the basis of the principle that it is easier to concede one goal less than your opponents than to score one goal more than your opponents. It seems to me perfectly logical reasoning . . ."

Many of the great players to have been coached by Trapattoni have had reason to argue with this "perfectly logical reasoning". Trapattoni himself recalls constant tactical disagreements with the current Uefa president, one-time Juventus star, Frenchman Michel Platini: "There was nobody like Michel. He was always shouting at me, 'move forward, get up the field, the defence is too deep'. I would reply, 'okay but first let's get on the ball.' I was always telling him that old story about the soldier who jumped out of his trench and got right in behind enemy lines. "Captain, captain, I've taken 30 prisoners," he reported. "Oh yeah?" "I swear it, captain." "I believe you, but first let me see the prisoners," answered the captain." (Gazzetta Dello Sport, 07/09/1991).

TIME HAS PASSED, many players have come and gone, Trapattoni has travelled from Munich to Salzburg via Lisbon, but the basic Trapattoni principles have changed little. The whole word saw those tenets in action at the 2002 World Cup and the 2004 European Championships.

In two key games, against South Korea and against Sweden, with the score 1-0 for Italy, he opted to "copperfasten" the result in true Italian style, taking off strikers and tightening up his midfield. It was the sort of move that a thousand Italian coaches make every Sunday afternoon. It looked like Brera's "perfectly logical reasoning". Except that it backfired in both cases.

In 2002, South Korea battled away first scoring an 87th minute equaliser and then eliminating Italy with a 116th minute golden goal from Ahn Jung Hwan. Against Sweden in Euro 2004, it was Zlatan Ibrahimovic who did the damage with an 85th minute Swedish equaliser that left Italy with a draw which eventually saw them eliminated.

When the news came through this week that Trapattoni had been confirmed in the Irish job, his one-time Juventus full back and erstwhile coaching assistant Claudio Gentile joked: "Now the Irish will learn how do defend well, it won't be easy for Italy in the World Cup qualifying group."

So, does all this mean that Trapattoni is simply a hopelessly dour, defensive coach? Not so fast. Those of us old enough (and lucky enough) to have seen his Juventus side of the 1980s would beg to differ. That team often featured strikers Roberto Bettega and Paolo Rossi, flanked by ultra-attacking midfielders Platini and Pole Zibi Boniek. Defensive they were not. That was a side that played superb football (forget the hateful night of the Heysel Disaster European Cup final in 1985) and did so with utter conviction.

Likewise, even Trapattoni's Italy, the side which brought most criticism down on his head, still played good football. If Dame Fortune did not necessarily smile on Trap in South Korea, many observers felt that the first hour of the 1-1 draw with Sweden in Portugal witnessed the best hour of football in the entire tournament.

On the many occasions he has been accused of playing too defensive a game, Trapattoni has often replied by pointing out that his sides nearly always feature three men up front. Look at the statistics, he will say. Six times between 1981 and 1989, sides coached by him topped the goalscoring chart in Serie A: "My ideal lineout is a 3-5-2 in which one of the midfielders is really an inside forward, so it would be 3-4-1-2."

IT DOES NOT sound like such defensive stuff, does it? If Trap is to encounter problems, they will not be technical or tactical. He has been around too long. Rather one is entitled to worry about just how Irish players, brought up in "British" footballing traditions will adapt to his requirements. It was one thing to practise a tight, containing possession game with the likes of Zoff, Cabrini, Scirea, Gentile, Tardelli, Furino, Boniek, Bettega and Platini or Brady, it may be quite another to do so with the current Irish squad.

Then, too, there is the thorny old linguistic question. With an Italian speaker and former great like Liam Brady alongside him, that problem may be overcome. Yet, it is worth recalling Trapattoni's experiences when he first moved out of Italian football in the mid-90s. His first season with Bayern Munich (1994-95) was far from a success and Trapattoni returned back to Italy, dissatisfied with himself and with Bayern having finished sixth in the Bundesliga. He felt his lack of good German had blocked him: "I told (club boss) Franz Beckenbauer that I feel I am only giving 50 per cent of myself because my great strength is to dialogue with players but here I cannot manage that as I would like."

Being Trapattoni he did not leave it there. Rather he returned to triumph with Bayern two years later, with his command of German much improved in the meantime.

Does this mean sooner or later, he is guaranteed to be a success with Ireland? That remains to be seen but hard-working, football-obsessed Trapattoni will give it his best shot. When your correspondent talked to him on the eve of the 2002 World Cup, I was curious about how he saw his immediate future. His answer says a lot about the man: "It's not in my nature to start thinking about the future, about what I'll do next. I've always thought of the future as a great opportunity. If you're frightened you'll never know it, if you're weak, you'll never get there but if you have hope, it will be another great chance for you . . ."