HEIMIR Hallgrimsson initially scoffed at the question of playing “entertaining and “exciting” football against Uefa Nations League opponents England in Dublin tonight.
Flanked by his captain Seamus Coleman at yesterday morning’s pre-match press conference, the new Republic of Ireland boss threw the question back at the reporter.
“What do you mean with ‘entertainment’ and ‘excitement’? What excites you? What entertains you?”
At that precise moment, the ghost of Giovanni Trapattoni hung in the air.
“If you want to see a show – go to the opera,” the veteran Italian coach used to lecture the Irish media during his time as Ireland manager between 2008 and 2013.
Trapattoni never professed to be in the entertainment business.
Hallgrimsson is probably cut from the same cloth as the charismatic Italian, but resisted the temptation of providing an equally bullish answer.
The reporter replied: “Attacking football... aggression”.
“Okay, just to understand the question,” Hallgrimsson said.
“If you play the game in your head, probably England will have more possession than us, so defensively we need to be really solid, taking the chances that we get, whenever we have the chance to play attacking football, go higher up the pitch. We’ve already prepared for that.
“I hope it’s going to be a mix of both… I think England will have more ball possession than us and if we are defending 60 per cent of the time, then we need to be prepared for that.
“That is how I see the game. Probably we will be defending more than attacking. But when we get it, we have our solutions going forward. Hopefully we will score some goals.
“Whether we will have more possession than them is irrelevant if we score goals from our chances.”
Almost with every answer he supplied yesterday, the more the media got snapshots of the Icelander’s ideology and how he will approach the Ireland job.
Somewhat inevitably, Coleman was asked whether or not Declan Rice and Jack Grealish - both of whom played for Ireland at different levels before declaring for England - deserve to get booed by the home crowd in the Aviva tonight.
Like all good defenders, he anticipated everything that was coming about Rice and Grealish.
“Do they deserve it? I think that’s a leading question for me to give you a headline. Listen, they chose who they wanted to represent.
“Whatever they feel they are, that’s what they chose to be.
“I know Declan came and he played three games – I can only speak of Declan coming in as a person, good guy, top player as everyone knows, but I just want lads that want to represent Ireland and we’ve got that.”
