Authors: Trevor Keane
Trapattoni also played for Italy, appearing in seventeen international matches over a four-year period from 1960 to 1964, scoring his only goal when he claimed the winner in a 1–0 success over Austria in Vienna in 1963. The highlight of his Italy career was the 1962 World Cup in Chile, although Trapattoni failed to start a match and the team only won one game, limping out of the tournament at the first hurdle.
FOOTBALL MANAGEMENT
Trapattoni is the rarest of managers, one who has enjoyed success wherever he has managed, with very few exceptions. He has won the League Championship in four separate countries (Italy, Germany, Portugal and Austria), only the second man to do so, after Austrian Ernst Happel.
Trapattoni began his management career in the early 1970s with the club he had given great service to as a player, AC Milan. Taking control of the youth team he managed the senior side for a period of six matches in 1973–74. The following season saw his ascent up the ranks as he was promoted to the position of assistant coach and became first-team coach in 1975. They finished ninth in Serie A in his first season in charge.
In 1976 Trapattoni made the short trip from Milan to Turin to take charge at Juventus, and so began ten glorious years of success. In his first season with Juventus, Trapattoni led the team to the League title, and he repeated the feat a year later. A treble of titles followed in the early 1980s, and Juventus soon came to dominate Italian football. Trapattoni also led the team to a trio of European triumphs as they won the European Cup, the Cup-Winners’ Cup and the UEFA Cup. The European Cup victory will forever be etched in the minds of football fans, as the 1–0 win at the Heysel Stadium in Belgium was overshadowed by events off the field that led to the deaths of thirty-nine football fans.
Despite the disaster, Juventus had finally claimed the European crown that many felt they deserved. In Michel Platini they had the best player in world football at that time, confirmation of which came when he won the European
Footballer of the Year title during the peak of Trapattoni’s success with Juventus, from 1983 to 1985. The 1984 Super Cup and the Intercontinental Cup (now the World Club Championship) in 1985 confirmed Trapattoni as a manager who was at the top of his profession.
His last season with Juventus brought yet another title before Trapattoni decided to move to Inter Milan. He spent five years with that team but failed to reach the dizzy heights of his Juventus days, as a Diego Maradona-inspired Napoli and a resurgent AC Milan challenged the upper tier of Italian football. That said, he did win the Serie A title in 1989 and yet another UEFA Cup in 1991 when Inter won an all-Italian final against Roma 2–1.
They say you should never go back once you leave a club, but the lure can be too strong for some managers. Juventus had declined in the period since Trapattoni had left them, and having seen the rise of the Milan teams, the aforementioned Napoli, and Lazio and Roma, it was inevitable that they would turn to their former manager to return them to the glory days. Sadly, the second coming was not the success many had envisaged, with a single UEFA Cup the only major success, although this did provide further proof of Trapattoni’s abilities beyond domestic football.
In 1994 Trapattoni set off on a road that would eventually lead to Ireland. At the age of fifty-five he decided to accept the role as manager of Bayern Munich. However, his first season in Germany did not go to plan, and at the end of the campaign he decided to return to Italy with Cagliari, having seen the Bavarians finish without a trophy. His return to Italy did not last long, however, and he only managed twenty-one games
for Cagliari before the lure of the world outside Italy proved too much. In 1996 he returned to Bayern. His second term in charge was much more successful, as the team won the German Championship in 1997 and the German Cup in 1998. Despite winning the Cup, his second season was largely perceived as a failure, as he lost the Championship title to newly promoted Kaiserslautern.
During this time his relationship with the players became strained. In a well-documented outburst, directed at the team and delivered in broken German, he announced that the players were like an empty bottle. The pressure of managing the German giants was becoming too much for Trapattoni, and following the loss of the title it was no surprise when he left the club for a second time.
A two-year stint with Fiorentina saw the club secure a Champions League group place, when they managed to claim victories over Manchester United and Arsenal. The club had finished third in his first season in charge, but their League position was not as impressive as their Champions League results, and at the end of the season Trapattoni was once again looking for work.
The next port of call was the top job in Italian football and completed the cycle for Trapattoni, from player to manager of his beloved Italy. Dino Zoff had resigned from the job, having led the country to the final of the 2000 European Championship, which they lost due to two late goals. The new style of open and attacking football was a change for Italy, and the future was looking rosy. Under Trapattoni Italy qualified ahead of Romania in group eight for the 2002 World Cup in Korea and Japan, where they opened with a win over Ecuador
before losing in controversial circumstances to Croatia. The result against Croatia derailed Italy, and they failed to recover. The defeat angered the Italians, as they felt they were the victims of some poor refereeing that cost them two goals. They regained their composure to draw late on with Mexico, but the damage was done, and they were beaten in the second round by co-hosts South Korea, who came from behind to defeat them, thanks to Ahn Jung Hwan’s golden goal.
At the 2004 European Championship, Italy once again failed to impress. They drew with both Denmark and Sweden, leading to an unexpected early exit from the competition at the group stage, despite being undefeated, ousted on goal difference after all three teams finished on the same points total. In June 2004 Marcello Lippi was named as Trapattoni’s replacement.
Trapattoni was not long out of a job, and he set off for pastures new to rebuild his reputation. His port of choice on this occasion was Benfica in Portugal. A renowned powerhouse in European football, Benfica was a sleeping giant and had not won the domestic League title for eleven years. The job had seen some of the biggest names in management try and fail to break their main rival Porto’s dominance in the Portuguese League: Jupp Heynckes, José Mourinho, Graeme Souness and José Antonio Camacho had all failed to lead them to success. However, in his first and only season in charge Trapattoni brought home the title. The club were also runners-up in the Cup, but despite this success Trapattoni felt Portugal was too far from Italy, and he decided that he needed to be nearer his family in northern Italy. He resigned the post shortly after the conclusion of his successful year. However, instead of returning to Italy, he took a role in Germany with Stuttgart amid much
fanfare. Negative results and open criticism from players saw him last only seven months there.
Country number four was soon on the horizon, and in May 2006 Red Bull Salzburg announced they had signed Trapattoni as their new director of football, along with one of his former Inter Milan players, Lothar Matthäus, as coach. History was made when Red Bull won the League, adding another title to Trapattoni’s record.
With the sacking of Steve Staunton, Ireland needed a big name to appease both the media and fans. Staunton’s reign had seen Ireland’s reputation diminish, and they needed an experienced manager to rebuild the squad. The FAI had never moved outside of Ireland or England in their search for a manager, and the likes of Terry Venables and Graeme Souness were the favourites for the job. However, to the surprise of everyone in the country, the FAI delivered one of the biggest names in football when in February 2008 they announced that Giovanni Trapattoni had agreed to become the country’s new manager.
THE IRELAND JOB
With such a big name on board, wages were always going to be an issue for the FAI, but they had a knight in shining armour in the shape of Denis O’Brien. O’Brien, an entrepreneur who formed Esat Digifone in the 1990s, agreed to part fund the appointment of Trapattoni, and a new chapter in Irish football history was about to begin.
Trapattoni’s first game in charge, a friendly against an up-and-coming Serbia on 24 May 2008, ended in a 1–1 draw. Andy
Keogh was the hero for the new coach, scoring an injury-time equaliser that won the FAI goal of the year. Trapattoni did not have to wait long to get his first victory, as five days later in another friendly, against Colombia, Ireland’s talisman, Robbie Keane, scored the winner in a 1–0 win.
Trapattoni’s team then went unbeaten during the qualifiers for the 2010 World Cup, winning four and drawing six of their ten group games. The pick of the results were four draws with Italy and Bulgaria. The 2–2 home draw with Italy was a return to the golden days, and were it not for a last-minute goal Ireland would have taken the group right down to the wire. The wily Italian also managed to scare the daylights out of Marcello Lippi in Bari when ten-man Italy was left clinging on for a much-needed point, despite taking an early lead. His tactical abilities were in evidence that day, as the introduction of Caleb Folan led to Robbie Keane scoring.
Giovanni Trapattoni has come under criticism from some factions of the media for his perceived lack of interest in watching new players. The Italian has been seen to be very loyal to the players he has used so far and in his defence, an unbeaten qualifying campaign is a good building block for any team.
The League of Ireland has largely been ignored by international managers, with Jason Byrne and Glen Crow the last League players to be capped by Ireland at international level, in 2006 and 2004 respectively. Before that it had been sixteen years since a League of Ireland player had appeared for the national side when Shamrock Rovers’ Pat Byrne got a cap. However, Bohemians goalkeeper Brian Murphy was called into the squad for the France play-off match that followed Ireland’s second-place finish in their World Cup qualifying group. This and the
fact that players such as Noel Hunt and Kevin Doyle both started their careers in Irish football and have gone on to make an impact on the English and international stage, gives League of Ireland players some hope.
However, St Patrick’s Athletic defender Damian Lynch reckons that at the moment the League of Ireland is not in a position to aid the national team too much: ‘It’s hard to argue with what Trapattoni has achieved with Ireland. He has done a tremendous job. In terms of League of Ireland players in the squad, obviously it would be great to see, and there are players here who are capable of playing at that level, but the League does not help itself, especially with clubs in difficulties and players not getting paid. You can’t blame Giovanni Trapattoni for not attending matches. The financial cloud that has been hanging over the clubs for the last eighteen to twenty-four months has meant that teams are struggling.
‘The likes of Keith Fahey and Jay O’Shea are great talents who have started to catch the eye of the Ireland set-up now that they have moved to England, but, being honest, and this is my opinion, the standard over here is not as good. In the League of Ireland you get six weeks of the year in Europe to show how good you are, but week in week out you are not getting to the same level as you would in the Championship. That said, there are some great players in this League, some of whom are capable of making the grade with Ireland.’
While Trapattoni’s reign has been well received by the fans, the man himself is really enjoying the challenge that Ireland offers: ‘Ireland is a small country, but it has good players with a lot of heart. The last decade has shown us that in international football everything is possible if a team is well organised with a
good structure. Greece showed everyone that when they won the European Championship in 2004, and the USA have showed it too with their good performance at the Confederations Cup, beating Spain in the process. With Ireland I have brought in a system that has helped the players believe in themselves and obtain good results.
‘One of the first things I did was that I told the players that they must believe, and they responded very positively. The squad improved progressively during the 2010 World Cup qualification campaign, with results against Montenegro, Cyprus, Bulgaria, then Italy and lastly France. With each new challenge the players rose to the task and have grown in stature.
‘Managing Ireland is different to managing Italy in that Italy is a very big country in world football, so the size of the squad and the number of options available to the manager is a fundamental difference. When I started with Ireland it was a small squad, and we did not have that many options, so injuries and suspensions were always a concern. During the campaign, however, we have introduced many new players, and this has given the squad more depth, something that I hope to continue.
‘Fans in both countries have a real impact on their team’s performances, and I have been genuinely impressed by the Irish fans. They have been very supportive of me. They really made a huge difference at decisive moments in so many of our games.
‘When Ireland played Italy it was of course an emotional experience, but I have always preferred to keep these things simple. When you are playing cards with your friends do you want to win or lose? You always want to win, of course. That is the
answer. In terms of the results against Italy it was disappointing not to win, but over two legs to go unbeaten against the 2006 world champions was a great result for our players and they should be proud of their performances. Managing Ireland means a lot to me. The welcome I have received in Ireland has been exceptional, and when we are playing I am very proud to accept the responsibility of representing the Irish people.’