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Keith Treacy: Aspects of Willy Sagnol's Georgia style not easy to replicate with Ireland

Willy Sagnol (L) does have a world class talent at his disposal in the shape of Khvicha Kvaratskhelia
Willy Sagnol (L) does have a world class talent at his disposal in the shape of Khvicha Kvaratskhelia

Keith Treacy is doubtful that Willy Sagnol would be easily able to replicate aspects of his Georgia set-up if he were to take on the Republic of Ireland job.

The former France international has been one of a plethora of names linked with succeeding Stephen Kenny permanently and guided Georgia to the last-16 at Euro 2024 in the first major tournament appearance for the country from the Caucasus.

A 2-0 victory over a second-string Portugal during the group phase was the highlight before they made their exit from Germany after Sunday night's 4-1 loss to Spain when they initially took the lead.

Whether Sagnol chooses to stay in charge of Georgia in the longer-term will be interesting to see given his stock has risen and that would also be no guarantee that he would choose Ireland, with uncertainty still reigning when it comes to who the FAI are lining up as manager.

However, he has been tactically astute in the way he has led Georgia, putting a workman-like team together, sprinkled with the stardust provided by Napoli's world class winger Khvicha Kvaratskhelia and highly-rated Valencia goalkeeper Giorgi Mamardashvili.

Speaking on the RTÉ Soccer Podcast, ex-Ireland winger Treacy said he was impressed by Sagnol's tactics but drew a contrast between both nations' sets of players especially in transition from defence to attack.

"Obviously with the Irish thing, you're looking at Sagnol and you're thinking if he came into this Irish team, could he replicate what he's doing with the Georgians with the Irish? I don't think so," he said.

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"The way they're set-up, the 5-3-2, it's brilliant. There's only yardages because you can drop back and make that a 5-4-1 or make it a 5-3-2 very, very easily.

"But what the Georgians do really well is there's not a lot of space. The back five is quite low, the three in front of them are probably six, seven or eight yards at most ahead of them, and you have the two up front that are saying, 'Any sort of misplaced pass here, we're going to hurt you.'

"But what the Georgians do in transition, when they win it, they find the pass really well and the player who picks it up, whoever it is, they can all have a dribble.

"They're all really comfortable on the ball, they can go and commit people, go past one or two players in the dribble, so they can eat up the ground really, really well.

"When I look at it from an Irish perspective, if we win it in transition and we give it to somebody in midfield, we don't have anybody who can drop the shoulder and beat two or three players or give it out to a winger and keep that attack going really quickly.

"We don't have that type of player, we don't have those types of wingers. Well, we have wingers who can get at people but in terms of giving it to them in our own half and saying, 'Go and eat up 70 yards and beat two or three boys', we don't have that.

"So Willy Sagnol, the way he has (Georgia) set up is brilliant and it's exactly the way the Irish team need to set up in terms of being rigid, dogged and not giving an awful lot away."

Watch every game from Euro 2024 on RTÉ2 and RTÉ Player as well as highlights and goals as they happen on RTÉ Sport digital platforms

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