It’s a new dawn, it’s a new day, it’s a new life for me. And I’m feelin’ good! Having been ‘caught in a Trap’ for the past twelve months or so, tomorrow signals the beginning of a new era for Irish football and for most fans, they couldn’t be happier. Ever since the atrocious performances at Euro 2012 (ah but we had the craic, right!?) the spirit among Irish football fans has been at an all time low. Now, a day short of a year since Ireland last faced Germany, a game which resulted in Ireland’s heaviest ever home loss (1-6), they travel to the land of Merkel without a manager and only two competitive wins in the past year, both over the mighty Faroe Islands. From the outside, one would fail to see any reason for optimism, they’re not far wrong.
However, the departure of Giovanni Trapattoni and his cohorts has instilled a much-needed yet perhaps misguided sense of belief into Irish football. Perhaps now we’ll finally break loose of the shackles and play the tiki-taka type football that the likes of Glenn Whelan and Keith Andrews have been reared on throughout their careers. Well, maybe not. In fact, the departure of Trapattoni won’t change much, if anything at all. A return to the squad for the likes of Darron Gibson, Andy Reid and Anthony Stokes is about as good as it gets, for now. If you listen carefully you may hear the feint whimpers of the Germans as they cower in fear.
It’s not all doom and gloom though, far from it. What Noel King has the chance to do now is to use that new-found sense of belief and lay the foundations for the new manager. Our chances of qualification are gone, what we must do now is get the squad back to basics, doing what we do best. Stifling opponents and… well that’s it really. It’s been a long time since we’ve suffered as many defeats in a qualifying campaign as we have in this one (so far). Euro 2012 knocked the stuffing out of us and we’ve never recovered from it. Trapattoni’s insistence on playing the same system with the same players certainly did not help.
Noel King is no master tactician, far from it in fact. But based on the squad he’s chosen alone, he’s been listening to what the Irish fans want and hopefully that’s portrayed in his team selection tomorrow. It’s a shame that the last two games in this campaign didn’t come in a different order. A home game at Kazakhstan would have been the perfect way to start off the new era but alas it wasn’t meant to be. We’ll go to Germany tomorrow and we’ll lose. But that doesn’t matter. Playing the right system with the right players is a win in our eyes, kinda…
Expected Line-Up
