Return of the miracle man
O’Neill plots Northern Ireland’s next big trick
MICHAEL O’NEILL is using mind games on his players as he attempts to embellish his reputation as a football miracle worker.
The Northern Ireland manager leaves no stone unturned to extract the absolute maximum from his group of journeymen – even down to making them watch motivational videos.
Getting into their heads certainly seems to be working.
If guiding his team to the last 16 of the European Championship last year was a stunning achievement, O’Neill can now surpass that by ending the country’s long wait to reach the World Cup finals.
They need to hold their nerve over two legs of play-off football against Switzerland – tonight at Windsor Park will be followed by the second leg in Basle on Sunday – to earn the right to rub shoulders with the likes of Brazil, Germany, Spain and England in Russia next summer.
Yes, they have been to the finals before: in Sweden in 1958 and then when Billy Bingham’s boys reached back-to-back World Cups in 1982 and 1986.
But in those days virtually all of his side came from the top flight – players such as Pat Jennings, Sammy McIlroy, Martin O’Neill, Norman Whiteside, Gerry Armstrong, Jimmy Nicholl and Mal Donaghy to name just a few of the 1980s heroes.
The current squad boasts just four players who play in the Premier League – Southampton’s Steven Davis, who will win his 100th cap tonight, plus West Brom trio Jonny Evans, Gareth McAuley and Chris Brunt.
The fact that the rest come from the Championship, League One and Scottish Premiership underlines the achievement of O’Neill in transforming the international nohopers into a team to be feared thanks to organisation, discipline, collective spirit and his powers of motivation. He will not go into detail about the content of the motivational videos but said simply: “I wanted the players to have a real strong identity and pride to play for Northern Ireland. I think sometimes we have to show that to them a little bit and the video was one way of doing it. “It’s just something we’ve done with the players, it’s not a new thing, we did it in the previous campaign. “We’ve done a lot of work with the players behind the scenes, not just on the training pitch. The key is to make sure that your team is right to play. If the video adds one per cent
I want the players to have pride and identity
or makes one player feel that wee bit better about themselves, then it was worthwhile doing.”
O’Neill’s transformation took a while to get going but over the past three years Northern Ireland have proved no pushovers, helped by the renovation of Windsor Park into an atmospheric home stadium. Another sell-out crowd tonight will be their “12th man”.
“We weren’t starting from a great position, it wasn’t an overnight fix and never will be when you’re a small country,” said O’Neill, 48, who played 31 times for his country. “The players deserve enormous credit, they had to turn it around themselves.
“You can get into a habit of things being poor and losing and that mindset. It takes guts to change it and the players did that. That’s something we hang on to.”
They will be underdogs tonight against a Swiss team that won nine of 10 qualifying games but still missed out to Portugal for an automatic place.
“To win nine games and miss out on automatic qualification is not a pleasant situation to be in for the coach or players,” said O’Neill. “Their strength is the collective like ourselves. We know Granit Xhaka and Xherdan Shaqiri and Haris Seferovic. We’ve done an awful lot of work on where they are as an attacking threat. They have a lot of tournament experience in their squad.”
But O’Neill is hoping his side seize the moment. “The players have done fantastically to get to this point,” he said. “There are eight countries left in the European play-offs and we’re the smallest one, but we’ve got everything to play for.”
Skipper Davis embodies the team’s spirit. O’Neill said: “It’s a great honour for him. I feel quite privileged as a manager to be able to give him that 100th cap.
“He’s a very humble person, he’s got time for everyone but has a great inner strength as well. Steven’s a captain that leads by example, takes care of everyone in the group and on the pitch takes enormous responsibility.”
That 100th cap will mean so much more for Davis if his country can take a major step towards the World Cup.