SFA may yet come up trumps in game of patience over O’Neill
IT’S not a hostage situation as such. But SFA efforts to secure the release of Michael O’Neill from Northern Ireland have begun to feel like a scene from the Tom Hanks movie Captain Phillips.
In the interests of accuracy, the Irish FA are not holding him at gunpoint like the Somali pirates on the Maersk Alabama. O’Neill is a free man living in Edinburgh and his only cargo is a watertight contract. But the IFA clearly don’t fancy setting the ship’s captain free.
And that leads us to an odd situation. One where the Scottish FA have, for once, been unfairly accused of dithering buffoonery.
It’s now 93 days since Gordon Strachan was sacked as manager of the national team.
And every day without a new manager exposes the governing body to fresh criticism.
Scottish football fans are not noted for their patience.
From the start, a narrative has taken shape. That the failure of the SFA to appoint a new man days after Strachan’s departure was evidence of gross incompetence.
Much of this was caused by journalists. A misconception that the IFA had granted their Scottish counterparts permission to speak to O’Neill early in the process. That wasn’t actually true.
Northern Ireland’s manager has an exit figure written into the contract extension he signed with the IFA last year.
Major clubs looking to speak to O’Neill were required to give a written undertaking to pay £750,000. National associations faced a bill for £500,000.
But the SFA — rightly — wanted the final figure in writing.
The IFA could — and continue saying — that the compensation bill was there in black and white.
But they haven’t exactly been busting a gut to prove it. Asked to send an invoice for O’Neill’s services to Glasgow, they’ve done everything short of jamming a chair in the door.
And you can hardly blame them for that.
O’Neill is the best coach Northern Ireland have had since Billy Bingham. His success might be down to a couple of central defenders who can’t follow him to Scotland. But the IFA want to keep him and they’re prepared to hand out a lengthy new contract to persuade him to stay.
One report last weekend claimed he intended to do just that. That he planned to ‘snub’ the Scotland job and sign a lucrative six-year deal.
But if that’s his intention, why wait? Why not just sign it now?
It’s not out of the question that O’Neill will decide the Scotland job isn’t worth pursuing. By placing all their eggs in one basket, the SFA have handed their No 1 target a bit of a blank cheque.
His current salary with Northern Ireland is £500,000 and Hampden bosses have little option but to offer a higher package for taking on Scotland. Between compensation and salary, it could cost £1.1million to hire the new man in year one.
And that still might not be enough. Sources close to O’Neill expect discussions with the SFA to be a two-way street. Stewart Regan won’t be the only one asking the questions.
But it clearly makes no sense for the former Hibs and Dundee United winger to rule himself out of the Scotland job until he has the conversation at least. If nothing else, Regan finally has his man on the dancefloor.
The carping over the time it took to get to this point is illogical.
From the outset, Regan said the SFA were prepared to wait as long as they had to. There was never any pressing need to make a quick appointment.
The risk of a club coming in and making O’Neill an offer he couldn’t refuse was real. But there was never the need to pay a full-time manager a hefty salary when the national team has no meaningful, competitive match until September.
The hope is that the new boss could be in situ for the Nations League draw in Lausanne on January 24.
But sending performance director Malky Mackay to watch some balls come out of a glass bowl would hardly constitute a national affront.
Giving the SFA a kicking is the done thing these days. The governing body are the softest of targets. A target for frustrated supporters and journalists with nothing else to write about.
But the slow wooing of Michael O’Neill can’t really be described as a farce. It’s barely even an old-fashioned shambles.
It’s not important that the SFA do it quickly. Only that they get it right.
After a three-month pursuit, cautious optimism is growing that they’re getting there.