Finger of fate points to Regan getting his man
OVIDIU HATEGAN’s absurd decision to award Switzerland a penalty kick may have been cursed from Belfast to Ballymena, but the Romanian referee probably earned himself a new No 1 fan in Glasgow. SFA chief executive Stewart Regan has placed Michael O’Neill’s name at the top of the list of contenders to replace Gordon Strachan as Scotland manager — and the chances of securing the Northern Ireland boss were enhanced by Hategan’s game-changing call at Windsor Park on Thursday night.
The official’s decision to penalise a non-existent hand-ball from Corry Evans has left the Ulstermen’s hopes of World Cup qualification hanging by a thread and, should they fail to overturn the 1-0 play-off deficit in tonight’s second leg against Switzerland in Basle, O’Neill’s future will become a hot topic of conversation.
He has been the SFA’s preferred candidate ever since the decision was taken to sever ties with Strachan on the back of Scotland’s latest doomed attempt at qualifying for a major finals.
Northern Ireland’s continued interest in the World Cup has seen Regan hold back from making an approach to the Irish Football Association but, despite his talk of an extensive list of candidates, one name stands out from all others.
Performance director Malky Mackay was placed in charge for the friendly against Holland in midweek but, as support grew for the former Cardiff City chief (not discouraged by the man himself), Regan took to national radio to bluntly rule out the caretaker just hours before the match.
The chief executive maintains that he is prepared to wait until next summer to land the right man, an extensive time frame that would allow latitude for O’Neill’s appointment after the World Cup.
Ideally, the new man would be in place sooner to try to plot a course to Euro 2020 and, consequently, Regan has found himself in the slightly warped position of wishing failure on the man who has been identified as offering Scotland a route out of the international wilderness.
Immersed in the business of trying to get his country to a World Cup for the first time in 32 years, O’Neill has been thinking of little other than navigating a path to Russia 2018. Qualification would be the culmination of six years of hard work and would represent the first time a Northern Ireland manager has taken the team to back-toback tournaments.
‘When I took over, I wanted the players to take on a real identity of playing for Northern Ireland,’ said O’Neill. ‘We weren’t starting from a strong position and it was never going to be an overnight fix.
‘You can get into a habit of being poor and losing games, so it takes guts to get out there and change that.
‘The players deserve credit for that. Now they’ve done that, not wanting to go back to the way it was before is all the motivation they need.
‘I remember the whole build-up to Euro 2016 and what it did for the country. We’d all love to experience that again.’
After making it to the Euros, the IFA moved to secure their manager on a new four-year contract in March 2016 on a salary of around £500,000, roughly equal to the terms on which Strachan was employed at Hampden.
The deal was structured to include a
hefty release clause for any club wishing to secure his services but that would not apply to a national association. With limited scope to improve the salary, any pitch to O’Neill would likely involve bonus payments based round qualification.
The case for O’Neill’s candidacy is obvious and is bolstered by the fact the 48-year-old former Dundee United and Hibs forward lives in Edinburgh and has two Scottish-based assistants in Jimmy Nicholl and Austin MacPhee.
Qualification for Euro 2016 would have been impressive even allowing for UEFA’s decision to enlarge the finals to 24 teams, but Northern Ireland blitzed their preliminaries, belying their status as fifth seeds to win the group before reaching the last 16 in the tournament proper.
Making it to the play-offs this time is arguably just as fine an achievement. If beating world champions Germany to top spot was an impossibility, O’Neill’s team brushed aside the Czech Republic with room to spare to finish second.
‘We have got to the stage now where we are genuinely expected to win games and are serious contenders to reach major finals,’ says forward Josh Magennis, once of Kilmarnock and now operating in England’s League One with Charlton Athletic. ‘In my eyes, that’s just ridiculous. I used to dream of that as a wee boy.’
Magennis was not even born when Northern Ireland were last at a World Cup. Then, in Mexico, Pat Jennings, Norman Whiteside and O’Neill’s assistant Jimmy Nicholl were in the team that took on Algeria, Spain and the
Brazil of Careca, Socrates and Josimar. O’Neill was 16 at the time and still waiting on the life-changing move from Coleraine to Newcastle United that would make him a full internationalist the following year.
It was his good fortune to be bled into a team that was used to success under Billy Bingham but he never managed to play at a major finals himself.
The current Northern Irish team boasts two top-class operators in West Brom centre-back Jonny Evans and Steven Davis, the former Rangers midfielder, now with Southampton, who celebrated the occasion of his 100th cap against the Swiss.
Davis is now 32, while defenders Gareth McAuley and Aaron Hughes are 37 and 38 respectively. O’Neill has made
a virtue of the fact he has been picking from a shalow pool of around 40 players these past few years and his options do not look like deepening.
It’s a testament to his manhat management skills that he commands universal respect from his players.
‘Michael is at the top of the pyramid and everything filters down from him,’ adds Magennis (right). ‘He makes sure that our preparation is right. It’s all about making things right for the
We are now serious contenders to reach major finals — that’s just ridiculous in my eyes. I could only dream of that as a boy growing up
players and he is good at taking the pressure away from us. ‘His analysis and attention to detail is brilliant. He has got the absolute best out of us.’ O’Neill’s alchemy has raised the standard but against the Swiss his team resorted to hitting hopeful high balls towards Kyle Lafferty and Magennis for little reward. A team built on their defensive organisation, an exploitation of setpieces and an unwillingness to contemplate defeat may only go so far and, at some stage, O’Neill will decide he has pushed the job to its limits. On his watch, Northern Ireland have proven themselves to be a better team than Scotland but few would argue that the quality of their players is higher than of those available to the Scots.
While Mackay was handing a first Scotland start to Callum McGregor — a Champions League scorer against Bayern Munich a week earlier — O’Neill viewed Millwall’s George Saville as his best midfield option as he sought a response to Swiss schemers Granit Xhaka and Xherdan Shaqiri.
Still, at 1-0 down it would be folly to write off the Irish. They played poorly at Windsor Park and yet the Swiss, for all their territorial dominance, required the hand of Hategan to win the match.
O’Neill commenced his programme for Thursday’s match by stating: ‘As a player or coach, there will be matches which define your career.’
If he pulls off one more big result tonight, then he may be celebrating another piece of history. If not, he is likely to be offered the chance to write a fresh piece of folklore this side of the Irish Sea.