It's extremely difficult to criticise Trapp given his career achievements, but if we were inhibited by our comparative lack of experience / knowledge / judgement we would not be on this site in the first place.
I was not happy with Trapp's appoinment. He's a big name with a big reputation, but was he the sort of prescription we needed after the insane chaos of the Staunton era? We seemed to be going from one extreme to the other. (to quote Yeats, "The best lack all conviction whilst the worst are full of passionate intensity".) It was more about the FAI doing public penance for the Staunton appointment rather than looking objectively at Irish football and working out what kind of direction we should be heading in. If we had had a crop of established quality Premiership players who were underperforming and needed whipping into shape then he may have been the ideal appoinment, but we didn't.
Trapp's approach is ruthlessly pragmatic. It is focused on devising a system that will get us through qualification, using players who are totally programmed to operate in that system. The system itself reflects a number of assumptions and perhaps also some of Trapp's own core convictions
The assumptions seem to be:
1) Ireland is not blessed with a wealth of creative talent so its about getting the most out of what we have.
2) Ireland's inherent stengths are commitment, physicality and a capacity to stifle and frustrate more technically gifted opponents
3) Ireland have some dangerous wide players and effective forwards. Rely on the wide channels to create scoring opportunities and set the rest of the team up to contain and defend.
I think that this analysis is flawed because the first two assumptions are not competely true.
We have more decent players than Trapp, Tardelli and Brady initially believed, but many happen to be playing outside The Premiership.
We are not a poor man's England. We have always produced good technical players and continue to do so. Our playing style should reflect and build on this aspect of our footballing tempremant. I think McCarthy is the only Irish manager of recent times who recognised this and had us playing real football.
Looking at the game on Wednesday, I think Beenhacker would have been a more sympathetic and progressive Irish manager. He would certainly not have chosen to ignore the talents of Reid, he would be looking to utilse and develop the potential of footballers like Foley, Garvan, McCann, Fahy, St Ledger, McCarthy. He would not entertain the delusion that the likes of McShane, Folan, Whelan, Bruce, etc will evet be effective international footballers. He would acknowledge that forward players like Keane and Doyle are not best served by a rigid 4-2-4 system with their supply coming almost exclusively from the flanks. Both of these strikes thrive on intelligent perceptive passes played either to their feet or into channels in front of them. He might even be able to appeal to the fragile psychology of Stephen Ireland and convince him that he would be the fulcrum of an exciting, adventurous and appealing style of play that would give him the recognition and fulfillment that he cherishes.
Trapp is a vastly experienced and talented coach, but I dont think he was or is what Irish football ideally needs. Looking ahead Owen Coyle is achieving great things at Burnley and playing open, attractive and progressive football. I think we should be keeping an eye on him for the future.
