Ireland's head coach Giovanni Trapattoni gestures during their international friendly soccer match against Hungary in Budapest's Puskas stadium June 4, 2012.LASZLO BALOGH/Reuters
He is famous for whistling and winning. He might be the most cunning and charismatic of soccer men at Euro 2012. He's white-haired, blue-eyed and he's 73 years old.
That's Giovanni Trapattoni, who is in charge of the Republic of Ireland team and is the oldest manager at the tournament. He commands Ireland when it plays Croatia in its first Euro 2012 game on Sunday in Poznan, Poland. It's the first time Ireland has qualified for a tournament since 2002 and its first Euro since 1988.
In Italy they call him "Il Trap" and in Ireland just "Trap." Sometimes Italians call him a "Calcio Nonno", a soccer granddad. To many he is "Il vecchio Trap," good old Trap. He is admired, adored even, in Italy, and at this tournament, he is feared a little.
He is also famous for such pronouncements as "I want to see a show, I go to the La Scala concert hall, I don't go to the football stadium." And this other gem I heard him deliver in Bari, Italy a few years ago: "The memory of beautiful football lasts for a while. The result lasts forever." At that moment, speaking to a huge group of Italian journalists after Italy was held to a 1-1 draw with Ireland, Trap had the audience chuckling, and in the palm of his hand. Every journalist there knew that Il Trap meant every word of it. Not for him the beautiful game, but he gets results. And that's why he's feared – although FIFA ranks Italy as 12th in its world soccer rankings and Ireland is 18th, with much less glamorous players, Italians know that Il Trap can make any team unbeatable. He is also expected to take special pleasure in facing Italy again, as Ireland will in Poznan on June 18.
Trapattoni has spent more than half a century in soccer, most of it winning as a player and manager. He is working-class from Milan, born in 1939 in a small tenement building that housed 16 families. He worked from an early age and he has said his background has made him "a total realist." He spent much of the 1960's playing for AC Milan, the dominant team in Italy of that era, and he was a tough defensive midfielder whose job was to stop the attacking forwards of the opposing team. He was famous for his defensive prowess then, as he is now.
In management, he is an international phenomenon. He has coached teams in Italy, Germany, Portugal and Austria and led all of them to league-topping success. He is also the only manager to have won all the UEFA and FIFA club competitions. But his term as manager of Italy's national team was less glorious. He took Italy to the World Cup in Korea and Japan in 2002 and Italy was famously knocked out by South Korea in a game that still causes controversy in Italy. The referee, Ecuadorian Byron Aldemar Moreno Ruales, made many questionable decisions – a booking for an Italian defender and a penalty awarded to South Korea in the opening minutes followed by a red card for Francesco Totti and the denial of a possible goal in extra time. Trapatonni hung on, coaching Italy to Euro 2004 in Portugal, but things went awry again. Italy was eliminated without losing a game but looked dull, more interested in grinding out a 0-0 tie than winning.
lI Trap then went to Portugal where he coached Benfica to win the 2005 league SuperCup, its first in a decade. Then he managed Stuttgart in Germany but friction with the club's owners made for his hasty exit. Next he took on the job of making Red Bull Salzburg a force in Austria and Europe and succeeded in the first task, winning the local league.
He is not someone to underestimate and he makes the 64-year-old Roy Hodgson, recently appointed England manager, look like an under-achieving whippersnapper. Hodgson's managerial career spans 36 years, he's managed 18 different clubs in eight different nations, but won very little.
Trapattoni's appointment as Ireland manager was a surprise announcement but a good fit. Ireland had landed a big name – his initial $3-million salary was paid in part by the Irish businessman Denis O'Brien and he's taken two pay cuts since then to stay on as Ireland's boss – and Trap savoured the job of taking a team, largely made up of journeymen players, from a small country, to big tournaments. Immediately, he instilled defensive discipline on Ireland's players. His usual program is to teach a defensive system, drill players in their roles over and over, and stick with a rigid plan. Il Trap, in his 60 years in the game, has learned to dislike players who don't follow his instructions and is suspicious of up and coming players he's never met or trained.
This has made him controversial in Ireland on occasion. The talent pool is small and the emergence of a new striker or midfielder is greeted with elation by soccer supporters. This past season James McClean at Sunderland, and both Wes Hoolahan and Anthony Pilkington at Norwich seemed to deepen the pool of Irish talent. Il Trap stuck with his core team and included only McClean for Euro 2012. This cautious approach, on the field in tactics and in choosing players, has caused some Irish media figures to mock Trapattoni as old and conservative. In Italy this criticism is met with amusement. There, the media point out that only Thierry Henry's two hand-balls prevented Ireland from qualifying for the World Cup in 2010 and Il Trap has taken Ireland to the Euro championship using his trademark caution and guile.
In Italy, they remain charmed by him. They like the whistling, for which he is notorious. During games, his piercing whistle from the sideline is what gets the attention of his players in a raucous stadium. You can ever hear it on the TV broadcasts. Il Trap says he copied the whistling style used by dads in his childhood who called kids off the streets to supper. And in Italy too they understand why he had holy water on the bench at the World Cup in 2002. They know his sister is a nun. Il Trap is old-school Catholic. They know why former Italian prime minister and AC Milan owner, Silvio Berlusconi, tried to persuade Il Trap to run for office for his Forza Italia party. They admire Il Trap for saying "no."
Success – any kind of success for the Republic of Ireland at this Euro – could be the final, crowning glory in Il Trap's long career. He's coached some of the best players in the world at AC Milan, Juventus, Inter Milan, Benfica, Bayern Munich and Fiorentina, and led them to glory. Now he works with many toilers in the second division of English soccer.
He showed his ruthless caution mere days ago when he cut Wolverhampton Wanderers' defender Kevin Foley from the Irish squad at the last possible moment. Foley said he felt "betrayed." Il Trap said he decided to replace Foley with a player who can do two jobs on the field and Foley could only do one. He said, with some impatience, that it is his job to be pragmatic.
In a pre-Euro interview with the Irish Times, Trapattoni was asked if he remains in contact with many of his former players. He is known for his loyalty and Marco Tardelli, the legendary midfielder he coached at Juventus, is his assistant as Ireland manager.
Il Trap acknowledged he is in contact with some of them on a regular basis. And he had a telling remark: "Mind you, I would prefer my former players to say that I was a decent person rather than a great coach."
He is probably that rare thing in soccer – he is both.