Duo hail Trap's stay

Republic pair hail impact of manager

By Peter O'Rourke   Last updated: 4th March 2010   Subscribe to RSS Feed

Duo hail Trap's stay

Trapattoni: Staying on

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Kevin Doyle and Stephen Kelly have expressed their delight that Giovanni Trapattoni has opted to stick with the Republic of Ireland.

Veteran coach Trapattoni was linked with moves to Nigeria and Turkey in recent months after the Irish missed out on qualification for the World Cup finals.

Trapattoni was thought to be on the shortlist for both Nigeria and Turkey, but the Italian decided to stay with the Republic where he is contracted until the end of the Euro 2012 qualifiers.

Doyle believes Trapattoni has made the Irish a better team and that it was vital to keep him at the helm.

"It's good to keep consistency," Doyle told skysports.com. "We have a similar team and we always have a strong squad as we have not had many injuries.

"We all have the same ideas as the manager, we all know what we are doing and it makes a massive difference to keep the manager."

Fulham defender Kelly feels Trapattoni has made the Republic harder to beat and he hopes the former Italy coach can lead the Irish to Euro 2012.

Influence

"It was very important to keep the manager, he has had a big influence on us," noted Kelly.

"Our shape has been excellent, we have performed well and we have been a very tight-knit group and been a very unified team.

"Teams have found it difficult to beat us - Italy and France home and away - so I think that is telling.

"We hope the manager is here for the next campaign and hopefully we do as well as we did in the last campaign."