A little bit of the outside world seeped into a few small rooms in Abbotstown yesterday and it was possible to wonder if Irish soccer would ever be the same again. The appointment of Giovanni Trapattoni as next Irish soccer manager is undoubtedly a coup for the FAI and a personal triumph for its chief executive, John Delaney. A new chapter begins.

First though there were questions about the money. A mini-tribunal of cavils.

The involvement in the deal of Jerome Anderson, the former Arsenal stadium announcer who is now a powerful agent within the game, drew some attention.

Anderson was recently central to the bloodless coup at Manchester City which saw the installation of a new owner, the exiled former Thai prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, a new manager, Sven-Goran Eriksson, and a slew of new players.

Then it was on to Denis O'Brien, the tax exile whose money will pay half of the new management team's wages. The money involved seemed big by our standards in the room in Abbotstown and we searched high and low for ulterior motives.

At the end of the day, however, the notion of a businessman throwing money at his favourite sport (JP McManus does the same to the Limerick hurlers without us fretting overly) is a commonplace these days.

Besides, would a man who netted 317 million from the sale of Esat really need to worry himself with pulling strings at the Football Association of Ireland?

Somehow though in Abbotstown yesterday we found ourselves dawdling at the gates to the new era. We didn't really think that small-time operators like the FAI netted big-time soccer men like Trapattoni without shaking hands with a few agents, did we? And, uhm, what did we think the Terry Venables appointment would have been like, scentwise?

We didn't really think that a business type paying half the wage of a manager was any different from paying the entire sponsorship or any different from the control which media like Sky Sport exert on the game.

Not really, but we wanted it all to be loveably shambolic, a deal done on the back of cigarette boxes, a vote in a committee room whereby the third candidate gets the job by accident.

Instead we have ended up with a manager who is stalked by success. We have no excuses. If we don't succeed under Giovanni Trapattoni perhaps we have to look at our pampered, overpaid payers and shake our heads. Perhaps we aren't good enough.

Yesterday was a good-news story for Irish soccer. Trapattoni is that creature we in Ireland had come to regard as mythical: the world-class manager. He will bring with him, in Marco Tardelli and Fausto Rossi, a professional and accomplished team of confederates.

Any charm will be coincidental.

It is time to test our players. Even those inveterate nitpickers who are pathologically unpleasable find it difficult to pick holes in the Trapattoni CV.

We are told he played defensive football when he was in charge of Italy - as if playing defensive football were beneath a nation which happily stank the place out with our primitive style during the odysseys through Euro '88 and Italia '90.

Trapattoni dutifully ushered Italy into two major tournament finals. He was required to qualify for them and was desperately, almost comically, unlucky to lose to South Korea in the World Cup second round in 2002.

Apart from that disappointment Trapattoni has 10 bona fide league titles under his belt as coach of Juventus, Internazionale, Bayern Munich, Benfica and his current club, Red Bull Salzburg, last season.

Throw in one European Cup and two Uefa Cups with Juventus plus one Uefa Cup with Internazionale of Milan and the three-man FAI committee who met with Trapattoni for two hours at the weekend should have had just one question for the man when they learned he was interested in the Irish job: "Are you mad?"

If we are leaving the chaotic good old days behind, part of the pleasure of the new era is purely parochial. Trapattoni outranks even Fabio Capello, England's new manager. And he speaks better English. And he has never had any league titles taken away from him over match-fixing. Capello lost his two titles at Juventus in the recent scandal, though he himself wasn't implicated.

The FAI have done well for themselves and for us. John Delaney, with one bound, is free from a perilous position. We begrudgers are muted. Even the ranks of Tuscany can scarce forbear to cheer.