Who knows how Ireland will fare in their World Cup warm-ups, but whenever I see Giovanni Trapattoni, I laugh privately inside. I can’t help it, and it’s not just a little giggle. It’s a bloomin’ great big guffaw.
 

What right do I have to mock the man? Well, the Republic of Ireland manager certainly had a record worthy of respect before he took the Irish job. He’d won all the major UEFA competitions together with league championships in four different countries, but the first time I heard about him was back in June 2007, when he was manager of Red Bull Salzburg.

I’m apologising in advance here, my colyoomistas, because I’m brazenly about to publish a clip from a colyoom five years ago.
Back then I played it just for laughs, but today you’re reading it because we now know well who he is. As your manager, he’s been extracting the urine from your country for years.

Anyway, first the laughs. Here’s the clip from the June 2007 colyoom:
“Giovanni Trapattoni, who I strongly suspect might be Italian, is the coach of Austrian soccer champions, Red Bull Salzburg.

“Showing a poetic talent that, despite his managerial achievements, suggests he might well have followed the wrong career, Snr Trapattoni let rip at a bunch of German journalists who were criticising his fitness coach, Fausto Rossi.

“Our training is strong. Is modern. Training wins also. I have 21 trophies. There is blah, blah, blah from you. Fools write who know nothing. Blah, blah, blah, blah. I can understand people paying. No problema! Let whistle, is right. Have lost. But run 90 minutes! I am a professional when it comes to psychology. We train, make fitness. You people always make qua, qua, qua! Shit fools!” ’

Doubtless the words of a genius, but is he somebody you’d want as your boss? Not your football team’s boss, but actually yours?
Would you like to go into a meeting on a Monday morning and be told “We must for to go biff sales and then bang bang very physical on budget deficit it will be.”

It’s neither politically correct nor internationalist of me to suggest that working for someone who doesn’t speak your language might not be the best scenario, but when the leader of your pack is meant somehow to transpose charisma through an interpreter, it’s like expecting your rasher to go “Oink!”

Yes, major global negotiations are successfully completed through interpreters, but when it’s just you and your boss and he doesn’t understand what you’re saying and you haven’t a clue what he’s on about, it just doesn’t work.

Footballers need to want to play for their managers. They need to be inspired and enthused by them.

A lack of common language was a big part of the problem with Fabio Capello’s England team, but while it was the elephant in the room in his case, Trapattoni’s stewardship of Ireland has a herd of elephants trampling throughout the building.

For more, read this week's Galway City Tribune.