Also published at ExtraTime.ie: http://extratime.ie/newsdesk/articles/6956/

As Tuesday’s crowd left the Aviva stadium and went on into the night, the atmosphere was that of having seen a job well done. Ireland 2, Armenia 1. The result was the important thing and Ireland had sealed their place in the Euro 2012 playoffs. And as a seeded team, no less.

All but the fastest out of the blocks to a nearby television would have missed Eamon Dunphy approach full pencil-tossing fury in his criticism of Giovanni Trapattoni’s tactical approach to the game. The argument put forward by le Dunph is that in using such tactics Ireland will not make it through the playoffs, let alone develop as a footballing power. He referred, as he has done before, to the sadness of the “real football men” when witnessing such football, if indeed it qualifies to be referred to as such.

The counterargument to this is that Ireland is a country with such limited footballing resources that Trapattoni’s way is the only approach that will yield results; style and ambition sacrificed in favour of safety and pragmatism.

Many have offered opinion, on the airwaves and in print, about the type of game played under the little Italian. Most depict a man seemingly devoted to the clean sheet at all costs, as evidenced by the most recent run of 851 minutes without conceding a goal (thanks to Gavin Reilly of The Journal for that stat).

In this vein, it’s worthwhile looking at how Trap’s Ireland team is typically set up.

Goalkeeper: No playing out from the back; instead launch the ball long. In the days of Kilbane playing wide midfield this worked very well; the aged one’s heading ability along with Given’s accuracy from kick offs provided a way of quickly moving the ball up the pitch while having a better than even chance of winning that first contest. In the current first choice team those headers are most often lost with possession surrendered quickly to the opposition.

Defence: The back four stay very flat with the full backs on a tight leash. No overlapping allowed; effectively they have no role in attacking play.

Centre Midfield: Two holding players, mostly Glen Whelan and Keith Andrews, whose job is to break up the opposing midfield play. They keep possession by passing backwards (preferably) and sideways only if it is absolutely safe. No risks are permitted. Similar to the defence they have no role in attacking play.

Wide Players: Tasked with the hardest job on Trap’s Republic of Ireland team, both wide men must be the creative sparks when Ireland have the ball then immediately form part of the second flat defensive line the instant the ball is lost. While this is highly effective defensively, they are partially neutered when Ireland have possession due to a lack of support from their full backs as well as a lack of option in any central midfielder arriving to assist an attack.

Forwards: The front men stay very high up the pitch with plenty of running into the channels. Usually after a time one will drop off (usually Robbie Keane) into the gaping space behind the front line in an effort to pick up possession to feet. They receive offensive support from the wide midfielders only.

Tuesday’s Irish team was set up in this fashion and played thusly for the first 25 minutes. At that point the Armenian goalkeeper was sent off*, leaving Ireland with a full 65 minutes to play against ten men. For the remaining 20 minutes of the first half, Ireland’s tactics changed not one iota. Even though Armenia had withdrawn a central player the tightly disciplined approach continued with the team (and manager) happy to accept any lucky crumbs that would come along.

* Complaints about the red card are highly spurious. The goalkeeper came charging out of the area with his arms held aloft trying to block the ball. The ball duly struck him on the shoulder joint. If he had run out and clearly kept his hands down this would have at least given the referee an option of giving him the benefit of the doubt. As it was, his arms were up; he’d already accepted the risk of a red card and that’s what he got. Now complaints about the way in which Cox controlled the ball coming over his shoulder, those can be entertained.

Not for nothing is Trapattoni known as the Lucky General, and a second even luckier crumb would come along before the end of the first half. Few more unlikely own goals have been witnessed at the Lansdowne Road site than the inexperienced Armenian defender, Aleksanyan, panicking his clearance, poking the ball nicely into the corner of his own net. The whistle blew just minutes later for half time.

The crowd stood and clapped the teams off while muttering a collective “Jaysus, that was a weird half” to their neighbours. Not much talk of the football itself, the majority of which had been played by people in red shirts with unpronounceable names.

Nobody in the stands could have thought that that for a brief fourteen minutes at the start of the second half there would be a tantalising glimpse of something different from Trap’s men, but that’s what happened.

As the teams took their places for the second half, most fans immediately spotted that McGeady had switched wings with Duff*. The more subtle and important change became apparent as soon as the ball was tipped off.

* the Duffer is not what he was – few are – but he’s still a valuable cog in this team. He just doesn’t lose the ball very often at all. He’s the anti-Hunt.

Both full backs, John O’Shea and Stephen Kelly, had abandoned their previous positions directly in line with their central defenders; instead they were now about stationed 15 yards further upfield while sticking diligently to the touchlines.

The impacts of this tactical change were immediate and significant.

– It made the pitch very, very wide, stretching the 10-man Armenia and creating space all over the park.

– The Armenian wide midfielders were pushed back deep into their own half, completely isolating their centre forward.

– It gave Ireland’s wide men real support, with Kelly even offering an overlapping option on occasion.

– The central midfielders were forced to break from their usual “flat two” approach, with Whelan and Andrews on occasion going as far as to take the ball from a centre half and play it forward to the other.

– Up front, Cox and Doyle immediately had supporting options coming from three places; the midfield (Andrews, primarily), a full-back hugging the touchline, and a winger who had either stayed wide or cut inside.

The men in green were suddenly playing with patience, intelligence and even a small bit of flair. Each player when given possession had two, even three options with all looking for the ball. As Kelly and O’Shea were pushed on Glen Whelan hung back, slotting into the defensive line to snuff out any Armenian attempt to exploit the space left by the full backs.

There was movement, positional interchange, cleverly angled passing. There was patience and creativity, intelligence and calm. This was momentous stuff considering the dross of the previous half and so many previous halves. It was not Barcelona, perhaps not even Stoke, but it was most definitely proper football.

Not all fans were immediately enamoured with the patient approach, all 14 minutes of it, and when the ball was passed from side to side without being seen to go forward with haste to the front men there were some murmurings of discontent. The “football men” however, as le Dunph would later describe them, would certainly have approved.

Nor was this simply a case of style over substance; during this time Ireland had a sustained period of possession lasting a full two minutes without interruption (50:20 – 52:20) which ended with a good chance. Notably, the chance was created for a full back, Kelly, arriving into the box after excellent team approach play. That the chance was missed due to a combination of Kelly being unsure on his “wrong” foot and a well-timed challenge from the defender is unimportant.

Let the record show that Richard Dunne’s scrambled goal in the 60th minute was not the direct result of such enlightened football, but for the previous fourteen minutes the Armenians had been made to look like a team with little experience and playing with a man less, both of which they indeed were.

Unfortunately Mkhitaryan’s goal for Armenia would signal the end of this brief time of illumination. All in green reverted to type with a speed and efficiency worthy of Pavlov; the wide men pulling in, the full backs tucking back safely beside Dunne and St. Ledger, and Whelan and Andrews going back to being, well, Whelan and Andrews.

It got worse.

Trap’s first substitution was to bring McGeady off and replace him with Steven Hunt. Removing McGeady from proceedings was inevitable; he was having one of those days where everything he tried went wrong, and the few things he tried to do correctly went even worse. But to bring on Hunt when Keith Fahey was sitting there on the bench made little sense when facing a team playing with ten men.

Fahey will never be a candidate for a World XI but the former St. Pat’s man is a tidy player, sure of touch and intelligent with the ball at his feet. Stephen Hunt has his uses in the green jersey, mostly if Ireland are a goal down at home and need the crowd to get going to set up a gung-ho final ten minutes. Aside from that Hunt’s standard output is be a possession-surrendering machine of rare efficiency.

The introduction of Hunt surrendered Ireland’s man advantage over the assured, ambitious Armenians. When the ball was pushed towards his wing there was, as always, much effort and sweat and that mop of hair a-flying but ultimately that ball would come back out safely controlled by an Armenian foot.

After Ireland went down to ten men due to Doyle’s second yellow card, Armenia continued to be on top for the remaining fourteen minutes (including injury time) as they had both the technical and tactical advantage over the men in green.

Happily for the home fans, Ireland held out, the crowd sang songs, the MC was his usual overbearing self and on everyone would go into the night thinking about the playoffs to come.

Huzzah!

But what of dreams?

It would not do to throw a tantrum and say that Ireland should play in the style of Barcelona or the wonderful Arsene Wenger teams of the past fifteen years. Idealism is worthy but must be grounded in some notion of realism in order for true progress to be made. After all, Giovanni Trapattoni has been paid to produce results and Ireland’s going through to the playoffs as a seeded team is most definitely that.

Ireland’s World Cup 2010 qualifying campaign was carried out in similar vein – stolid, pragmatic football – and was greeted as a net positive when compared to the awfulness of the preceding management. Then came that fateful night in Paris when, after one had brushed the Henry handball from memory, there was a match in which Ireland had played some wonderful football. As a nation tried to leave the trauma in Paris, so too was Trap strangely content to leave that football behind, happy to go back to the ultra-defensive game that had got the team to that stage on the first place.

The Aviva Stadium is not Paris, and a young Armenian team are not the France of Anelka and Henry. But there were fourteen minutes in that match on Tuesday which should open some eyes as to what could be possible.

It might, perhaps, even be enough to give hope to the football men.