You make decisions and you live with them. I don’t regret turning down Scotland
ON a Saturday afternoon you might catch Michael O’Neill spectating at Spartans’ Ainslie Park. As in Mail Sport’s case, one could bump into him on a low-key evening at his old stomping ground of Easter Road.
For the most part, he attracts minimal attention and that suits the Northern Ireland manager just fine. By his own admission, he likes to fly ‘under the radar’, something that wouldn’t have been possible in his adopted home city had he made a particular career choice five years ago.
An Edinburgh resident for the past couple of decades, O’Neill retains a deep fascination for Scottish football but could have been much closer to its beating heart had he accepted the SFA’s offer of the national team job in early 2018.
Instead, he turned the job down in favour of a new contract from the IFA, negotiated on overwhelmingly favourable terms.
In 2019, he achieved his goal of managing in English club football with Stoke City, where he spent almost three years before returning to his old post last December. In many respects, it looks like he has landed back at square one, in charge of a second team-building project amid an ailing qualification campaign.
Under Steve Clarke, Scotland are surging towards next summer’s Euro 2024 finals in Germany and have also ascended to the top tier of the Nations League. Surely he must muse on what might have been?
‘You always reflect on these things,’ he says. ‘I look at the Scotland team now and they have a very good squad, strong in a lot of areas. But it was a difficult situation for me in 2018.
‘I was at a point in my career where I had been an international manager for six years and I was actively looking at situations in club football. To leave Northern Ireland for Scotland would not have been the right thing to do.
‘The worst thing I could have done was say I’ll take the Scotland job and then six months later I’m wanting a job in the Championship.
‘It wasn’t any reflection on Scotland. Because you could see a team developing under Gordon (Strachan) and Steve has carried that through.
‘You make decisions at the time and you live with them. I don’t look back with any huge regret.’
Having ended Northern Ireland’s 30-year major tournament absence at Euro 2016, O’Neill was the obvious candidate to end Scotland’s own two-decade qualification drought. Local, eminently qualified and interested, he entered into face-to-face talks after a protracted negotiation between the two associations.
Chief executive Stewart Regan copped some flak for failing to land his man but O’Neill does not fault the SFA for their approach to negotiations.
‘There was no issue with that,’ he adds. ‘First of all, I was under contract, so Scotland had to agree something with Northern Ireland.
‘Scotland had finished in November, missing out on the World Cup in the final game. We went into the play-offs and were beaten by Switzerland. So really you had four months to make the decision.
‘Associations don’t generally pay compensation for managers. Stoke coming and doing it is a different ball game. They make that decision in half an hour.
‘Any dealings I had with Stewart Regan and Co were fine. The conversations were very positive. We got to a point where we were sitting in a room, discussing where
the team was and how it would move forward. You could see Scotland had the backbone of a good team, but probably didn’t have the options at centre-back.’
The criticism of Regan and Co only grew as they enacted an underwhelming plan B that saw Alex McLeish installed for a brief and ill-fated second reign.
Although the conventional Euro qualifiers were a dispiriting affair, McLeish had secured the safety net of a play-off via the inaugural Nations League. Clarke took advantage via penalty shoot-out wins over Israel and Serbia.
After turning down Scotland, O’Neill penned a six-year contract with the IFA that gave him the right to pursue any emerging club options. When Stoke met the compensation threshold in November 2019, all parties agreed to a job share designed to accommodate the Euro 2020 finals.
Covid put paid to that, so he stepped down to follow his club ambitions. He added: ‘The decision to go to Stoke was the right decision for me at that time and I don’t regret that either. When I was looking at club jobs I wasn’t necessarily looking at the badge — I was looking at the ownership, size of the club and logistically how it would work from a family point of view.’
O’Neill proved a dependable manager of Stoke, shrewd and solid enough to keep them safe in his imperilled first season but unable to mine that exceptional run of form that might have threatened the promotion places. He was sacked in August of last year, just at the point his successor Ian Baraclough was running out of time in Belfast.
‘A big part of being a manager is staying in work,’ he reasons. ‘But you have to evaluate every job on its own merits.
‘I’m enjoying the challenge with Northern Ireland again and this time I am involved with a lot of additional projects with the IFA.
‘I do like the business end of the game, too. Down the line, I would see myself not necessarily in the dugout but in a decision-making position where I can help build and drive a club forward.
‘I’m 54 now. I have done the first part of a masters in sporting directorship at Manchester Uni. That type of role or a CEO role certainly appeals to me.’
Northern Ireland’s Euro 2024 campaign started with a win over San Marino followed by three 1-0 defeats to Finland, Denmark and Kazakhstan. Thursday night’s 4-2 defeat in Slovenia offered some encouragement for the future but effectively ended any hopes of qualification.
By contrast, Scotland have blitzed their Group A schedule, taking a maximum 15 points from the opening five games. The emergence of Ryan Porteous and Jack Hendry has eased Clarke’s concerns around the centre-back position but he has also used the eligibility rules to tackle deficiencies in attack and in goal.
Lyndon Dykes then Che Adams committed through bloodline in time for Euro 2020 and, more recently, goalkeeper Angus Gunn has declared. And, in that key regard, O’Neill believes Clarke has an advantage.
‘It’s widely known that any player who qualifies to play for Northern Ireland is also eligible to declare for the Republic. But that’s not a rule that works both ways and we’re kind of aggrieved with that,’ adds O’Neill. ‘We have to be right on the ball with eligibility and put a lot of work in earlier.
‘Scotland are maybe able to get them a bit older. I had Angus at Stoke and, at that point, he was probably still in that England mindset and under review. Eligibility is the quickest way to improve your team but it’s more competitive now than it has ever been.’
I was at a point where I was actively looking for situations in club football