  A quasiparticle description of pure glue QCD thermodynamics at T<T_c is
proposed and compared to recent lattice data. Given that a gas of glueballs
with constant mass cannot quantitatively reproduce the early stages of the
deconfinement phase transition, the problem is to identify a relevant mechanism
leading to the observed sudden increase of the pressure, trace anomaly, etc. It
is shown that the strong decrease of the gluon condensate near T_c combined
with the increasing thermal width of the lightest glueballs might be the
trigger of the phase transition.
