The performance at home against Bulgaria was awful but we didn't lose. What made that result acceptable was our performance under pressure in Sofia against a Bulgarian team up for it.
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The performance at home against Bulgaria was awful but we didn't lose. What made that result acceptable was our performance under pressure in Sofia against a Bulgarian team up for it.
Bobo was before Trap but I don't remember being entertained.Quote:
Originally Posted by Emmet7
I think it better to discuss the victory after it has happened ;)
What a great quote from Trapp. Future generations will look at our 0-0 against Egypt in 1990 and say, not bad. Those of us who were at it will remember otherwise performance wise but our memories will pass with us.Quote:
Originally Posted by Emmet7
This French team isn't anything to write home about but on paper they are better than us. Beating them by whatever means will rank highly. They are favourites (perhaps 65/35) but for me beating Holland at home with an average team in 2001 was our greatest achievement in a qualifying campaign.
in my view beating France would be our greatest victory - i think we had a far better side in 2001 than we have now- we had a better central midfield , fullbacks , strikers etc , than now - it would be a remarkable story - also i often hear people talk about how Italia 90 lifted us out of the doom & gloom as a nation - so equally it's important for those reasons - and i would love to see all the irish newspapers on thursday 19th of November with headline that doesn't relate to the government or economy
People have romantic visions of irish history and the irish football teams of past years!
if we beat france it will be our greatest victory because it will be over two legs. even if we don't win either of the games, that's more impressive, to match a world class side over 180+ mins.
Yes but you can be sure your friendly Govt. ministers will be jumping on the bandwagon Well, forget about it Fianna Fail, your days are numbered and it will take more than SA qualification for us to forget what you (and FG previously!) did to our country!Quote:
Originally Posted by Royal rover
I’m, reminded of the 3 lads (Darren RIP) coming back from Beijing with the medals and the appalling Micháel Martin talking about how “direct targeted investment” in particular sports was now paying off…I nearly puked, my stomach hasn’t been right since. The LAST thing I want on 19th November is to hear from any of those corrupt fiddling scumbags!
Quote:
Originally Posted by magnumpi
On what planet is it more impressive to draw with France and match them, rather that BEATING them???
PS. It doesn't matter anyway, i expect the match to be over as a contest by about 8.45 on Saturday evening. 0-3 France
We matched and beat Holland in 2001 over 180 minutes (draw and win). We have a reasonable record (4-3 in their favour) in WC games against France. Holland was a huge monkey off our back.Quote:
Originally Posted by magnumpi
No doubt a victory would be up there with the best. Just not sure it would be THE best.
Allez les verts.
15 minutes before kick-off? That's pessimistic even by your standards.Quote:
Originally Posted by weldoninhio
If they bottle it in the dressing room, he could be right, but yeh, it's a good point, it can't be over before it's begun...unless someone like Robbie Keane, Shay Given or Richard Dunne is injured before the game.Quote:
Originally Posted by Stuttgart88
If we beat France over two legs, I'll be legless .........:DQuote:
Originally Posted by magnumpi
I love welondinho, assuming we do lose to France, he will be back on here saying "I told you so and none of ye would listen and trap has to go". Yet this would be the only one he would have "predicted" "right"....out of all the others he predicted :D
He still hasn't acknowledged all the other ones he got wrong yet...:D
Foot.ies Eamon Dunphy.
thank god weldondinho is predicting that we'll get hammered, just like in every other game so far this campaign. i can sleep easy now.
Quote:
Originally Posted by paul_oshea
There were threads about the predictions for the other games that were full of predictions, i acknowledge i was wrong now, should i set up a "acknowledge you were wrong in the predictions" thread?? we drew instead of losing, so what?? Is it just me that should acknowledge i was wrong?? What about all the people who said we would win in those threads?? Where should they acknowledge that they were wrong??
I would love to see the back of Trap.
There are plenty of sites like that but foot.ie isn't one of them.Quote:
Originally Posted by weldoninhio
4 acknowledges, 3 predictions and 3 wrongs in that paragraph.. You've ingrained those words into my brain now! I acknowledge your predictions are wrong.Quote:
Originally Posted by weldoninhio
OK, get back to me after the play-offs, i expect my prediction hoodoo to end. Spectacularly.Quote:
Originally Posted by M@ttitude
1-0 against the Dutch in 2001 still the greatest ever win for me. Playing the last half hour with 10 men and scoring as well, with everything at stake. A transitional Dutch team no doubt but still.
Beating the French to qualify would top it.
A stopped 24 hour clock is right once a day ;).Quote:
Originally Posted by weldoninhio
Hopefully nonetheless you will be supporting Ireland.
NO, but its just how wrong you were, and yet everytime you made another bold prediction you were more adamant(right). From what I saw was as though you thought well I cant be wrong all the time, so surely Ill get this one right.Quote:
Originally Posted by weldoninhio
The more bold the prediction the more unbeleivable it was, but you probably thought that you would be more right by predicting it that way when it did happen :)
To be honest, i'd rather not see an Irish team embarrass itself on a world stage playing the turgid, anti-football that Trap is pushing on us. I would support us if we played proper football. In my defence, i turned down tickets to both legs, so that someone with an interest could go.Quote:
Originally Posted by OwlsFan
Nesun Dorma on here.. Jaysus the goosebumps.. If we beat France its fourth after getting to 90 94 + 02
My support for my national team is not conditional on how they play, but each to his own I accept.Quote:
Originally Posted by weldoninhio
What gets me though is why you bother posting on a forum about something you admit you have no interest in. I don't post on GAA forums because, eh, I have no interest in it. Yours is about as close an admission to being a WUM as we'll ever see here and it'd be nice if the mods took note.
Well its good to have objectivity on the board, and whilst I was going to post something along similar lines, I didnt bother as I thought that was giving receipt of reading his post, and thats playing exactly into a WUMS hand.
I enjoy people coming on giving different views to the majority, but I dont really see why you would come onto the Ireland forum, posting something when you don't support your country. BUt like so many others in Ireland "support" is like a light switch they can turn it on and off, except it seems to turn on and off more than a hoor changes her wet knickers.
Support is unconditional, hence why its called "support". Or at least it should be.
I'm Irish and i do have an interest in the national team. Its just my opinion that we are using turgid, anti-football tactics at the moment. I still watch the matches on TV, i'm just averse to paying E70 to watch a style of play that does not excite me. I have no interest in supporting this "try not to lose, don't try to win" senile old man with his dour tactics.
Everyone is going on about how trap has made us more solid etc, but how many times have we gone ahead and thrown away that lead??
Its a forum Stutts, if everyone agreed with everyone and had the same opinion it would be pretty dull, like trapattonis Ireland!!!
Why don't you just say so then? There's an antagonistic tone to nearly everything you write and you go on record as not having any interest, only to qualify it it later.
I'm more in favour of Trap than I am against and there are things I'd like to see done differently, but I'm as excited as hell about the games we have coming up. I don't think we'll win for what it's worth but I think suggesting it's over before it even starts is pretty miserable.
Lets be honest here. When was the last time we play open attacking football? The beautiful game?
Yep me neither, I cant say I ever remember feeling like we played that way.
The good old days what?
I never once mentioned open attacking football, i merely stated that i hate the anti-football that we are playing at the moment.Quote:
Originally Posted by Junior
Out of interest and just to indulge you. Give me an example of a performance that you really enjoyed from Ireland? - Irrespective of result of course as that is not something that is being taken in to consideration with Traps "anti-football" performances.Quote:
Originally Posted by weldoninhio
I enjoyed our 2-2 all draw in Holland in qualification for the WC02, especially Dunne kicking Kluivert up the arse out in the corner, always likes Dunne since that game. Disappointed not to get the win, but ces't la vie. Also enjoyed our 1-0 against Holland to qualify.Quote:
Originally Posted by Junior
Don't think we've played consistent, decent football since McCarthy left.
We play 4-4-2. We play with two wingers. I am not sure you could call that "turgid, anti-football tactics". I am not sure anyway what the latter phrase means. There is no set way of playing football as far as I am aware.Quote:
Originally Posted by weldoninhio
I accept there are different views but I couldn't care less what style we play. I certainly wouldn't base my support on the country or club I follow upon the manner in which they play the game.
What you have therefore is conditional support. But I wonder how far that conditional support of yours would go if the team you followed attempted to play the ball on the ground all the time but lost most games. Would you still pay your €70.00 a game to watch it lose? Were you a big fan of Trapp's successor, Stan, who tried to play the game you aspire to without much success alas. I doubt it.
I wouldn't describe Trapp as "a senile old man". Have you ever met him? He is far from senile and if you ever achieve a fraction of what he has achieved in his lifetime, you'll be a lucky man. I take it by your description of Trapp that you want a young manager (e.g. Stan) who attempts to play exciting football without necessarily winning (e.g. Stan) or is it exciting football and winning you want. I would suggest therefore you follow Real Madrid, Man U and Spain/Brazil and leave the rest of us to the real world of trying to qualify for South Africa no matter how. If you want to see excitement, watch the country's reaction if we do.
We play to "not to lose" rather than playing to win. This is anti-football, football is a game that is decided by who scores the most goals. I would prefer to lose some games and win others i.e. if we lost to Italy and beaten Montenegro we'd have 1 point more than we ended up with.Quote:
Originally Posted by OwlsFan
As Trap says, football is not a show or about entertainment. It's not about allowing other teams to score and you score more.
Football at the top level is basically a game of chess. A mistake by one side can be punished by the other in the blink of an eye. That's the context in which Trap has managed through his whole career. He has realised that if you let your defense down for even a few seconds against top players you will get punished.
Against Italy in the second leg, we let our guard down for a few seconds towards the end, and they scored a goal which cost us victory. It was largely because most of the Irish team were in the Italian half, attacking when at least a few more players should have stayed back. It demonstrated there is a time for attacking football and a time for defensive football. It also showed when we try to play open expansive football with the players we have, we get carved up so easily.
If we had world class players, we could play exciting attacking football like Real Madrid and Barcelona. But we don't have world class players and so must play a certain way, a negative way sometimes, but it has to be done.
The best football I've seen from an Irish team in recent years was during our U-21 game against England in Southampton. Garvan, Quinn and O'Toole dominated the midfield, we passed the ball around nicely, and showed flashes of real skill and technique.
We lost 3-0.
In fairness, we could be retaining possession better in midfield and playing more aesthetically attractive football, but I seriously doubt that Trap is telling Andrews and Whelan to hide from the ball. He's not encouraging them to give it away at every opportunity. If you cast your mind to the opening two games of the campaign, and the friendly with Norway, we were playing some nice, patient, passing football. That went out the window when Steven Reid got injured. Andrews hadn't even made his debut this time last year, and Whelan's international career is still in its relative infancy. Its their lack of experience that lets us down in that area.
Compared to the experience and pedigree we have in other areas; Given, O'Shea, Dunne, Duff, McGeady, Doyle, Keane; we are lacking in central midfield, and have been since the retirements of Roy Keane, Holland and Kinsella (and, I might add, the failure of McPhail, Thornton, Miller and others to step up to the plate). After the game away to Cyprus, Trap actually stated that Andrews and Whelan 'need to trust themselves more'. He's not telling the players to shy away from keeping possession or passing the ball.
You obviously don't remember the 0-0 draws at home to Iceland or Lithuania in 97, the defeat to Macedonia in the same year, the Croatia loss in 99 when Zvonimir Boban, watching from the stands, described Ireland as 'the worst team I've ever seen', and saying that even Malta even showed more ambition when playing Croatia a month earlier. What about our turgid 1-1 draw in Macedonia, when McCarthy inexplicably left out Duff and replaced him with Gary Kelly? I could go on and on here. Point is, it took McCarthy a hell of a long time - more time than most international managers get - to get the balance right between playing good football and actually getting results.Quote:
Originally Posted by weldoninhio
Dull? time to look in the mirror to see what dull is.Quote:
Originally Posted by weldoninhio
Trap's style of play is an absolute carnival compared to the relentless monotone drone of the negativity seeping through your every post on this site.
This can be the thread that acknowledges that everyone that predicted an irish win can acknowledge they were WRONG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AS PER ABOVE!!!Quote:
Originally Posted by weldoninhio
what do you want? A medal?Quote:
Originally Posted by weldoninhio