Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
LEARNING AMBITION
Former Donegal boss is ready to travel far and wide in his bid to become a top football manager in his own right
FROM Ballybofey to Bilbao, Jim Mcguinness’s coaching horizons continue to expand. Having taken on an increasingly influential role at Celtic since joining as a performance consultant in 2012, Mcguinness has obtained his coaching badges and will start work on his UEFA A Licence in July. “That will take a year to complete and in the process of that year, I will study the game as much as possible,” he explained. “There are quite a number of teams and managers that I am looking at, and what they are doing and how they are doing it in line with my own vision so I want to tick those boxes over the next 12 months and put myself in a position at the end of the year, if I get the badge, that I will be more comfortable how I see the game myself.” The journey will take him to places like Dortmund, Leverkusen, Bilbao and Leipzig. After that? He may tackle the Pro Licence. Mcguinness added: “I don’t know where it’s going to end up, I just want to keep on going, keep on progressing and see if I’ve got the capacity. “But I’d like to maybe at some stage take control of a team myself, whether that’s the young lads within the academy or whatever, I’d like to obviously get out the other side in terms of my own philosophy, start working with a team on a day-to-day basis.” Interesingly, he believes there are tactics in Gaelic football that could be incorporated into soccer. “One aspect would be kickouts. In Gaelic football, most of the goals will come from kickouts, if the opposition push up and push up, we have an opportunity to go long and if we go long, then there is a chance that there is a bit of space in behind the defence. “And so, it is a very strong offensive strategy, whereas in soccer, the kick-out is seen as something that you can retain possession if it’s short but it is almost as if it is going long, you need to protect yourself. So there is room there for Gaelic strategies.” Mcguinness had already had stints at Bayer Leverkusen and Man City in his coaching education and the open door policy in that regard is very different to the inter-county football scene. “It’s very closed but at the end of the day you are playing the same teams year in and year out. “There is no transfer market and so you kind of know what the Donegal group is going to be. “That’s why counties get excited thinking, ‘We are going to have that squad there for the next five or six years, we could possibly win All-irelands or do things with it’. So you’ve got to protect that. “So you don’t want to be going into Derry, showing your hand and then them coming in July and taking you down whereas the environment is so changeable in football in terms of players in and players out.”