I’VE MISSED IT ALL SO MUCH

● O’Neill pines for Celtic while his daughter is a big Ange fan ● He rates Scotland highly as they face struggling Irish side

MARTIN O’NEILL can exaggerate umbrage with the best of them. Two decades since his Celtic prime, the Northern Irishman is holding court in a Glasgow hotel, expressing mock indignation at the popularity of the new Bhoy in town. Even his own family have been seduced by the charms of Ange Postecoglou.

‘I have two daughters and one of them is now a bigger Celtic fan now than when I was manager,’ he jokes. ‘It’s a major disappointment to me.

‘She’s running around: “Ange, Ange, Ange”. And she’s got a three-year-old who is in front of the TV shouting: “Come on Celtic…”

The Australian secured a league and League Cup double in his first season in charge. Modestly, O’Neill omits to mention his own induction year in Scottish football when he secured the club’s first domestic Treble in more than three decades. He then led the club to their first European final in 33 years and, when he quit in 2005, he did so as the longest-serving Celtic manager since the late Billy McNeill. He still is.

The decision to leave was heavily influenced by the health of his wife Geraldine. Returning to England, he managed Aston Villa, Sunderland, Ireland and Nottingham Forest but never quite managed to replicate the success of his five years in Glasgow.

‘I’ve honestly missed it so much. Seriously,’ he said.

‘My wife, who hated every place she’d been to in her life, absolutely loved it in Scotland.

‘If she ever goes to heaven — which she won’t — she’d complain about that as well! But she loved it here and I was the same. It was great.

‘You’d wake up and look out the window and not know if it was June or October. But that didn’t matter to us coming from Northern

Ireland. I came up to do the Motherwell game with Stiliyan Petrov last month and the atmosphere and the singing, it brings it all back to you.

‘I had great days, the torch is passed, the current manager is going great and it all looks rosy.

‘I did five years — it was like five minutes. I do miss it, absolutely.’

Now in his eighth decade, he expects his last breath on earth to be preceded by a final bout of fretting over missing a big game the following Saturday. A fit and youthful 70-year-old, he’s only half-joking.

‘I do some punditry work for overseas television out of London, which is handy and I enjoy it,’ he said. ‘I’ve maybe hidden behind Covid a bit in recent years. I’ve not pushed for anything.

‘Time is pressing on, I’m 135 on my next birthday...’

He seems the obvious man to ask about the Republic of Ireland hosting Scotland in Dublin tomorrow.

Captain of Northern Ireland when they set the 1982 World Cup alight with a 1-0 win over Spain in Valencia, he chose to take charge of the Republic in November 2013.

Backed by Roy

Keane, the highlight was the win over Italy in the group stages of Euro 2016 which claimed a slot in the last 16. His reign ended after the failure to reach the 2018 World Cup and relegation to Pool C of the Nations League, a competition proving a thorn in the side of one Ireland manager after another.

Successor Stephen Kenny has yet to win a game in the Nations League after eight attempts. Successive defeats to Armenia and Ukraine leave the Irish bottom of Group B1 ahead of the visit of Scotland.

‘The Armenia game was a big, big setback,’ said O’Neill. ‘Sometimes you get a couple of results in matches against sides who are not in the top 80 — teams like Andorra, Lithuania.

‘You can start to get a false impression of where you are. Then you travel to Armenia fully expecting to win and get off to a bad start. It’s a major setback.

‘I suppose a couple of years into Stephen’s reign you’d have to ask… I think there are a couple of things about it. If his remit was to rebuild an Irish side and get time to do that then that’s fine. But in international football you still have to win matches.’ Armenia’s limitations were starkly exposed in a 2-0 defeat to Scotland. And seven years to the week since the Scots drew 1-1 on their last trip to Dublin, anything less than a win would feel like a mild disappointment.

‘If Scotland are at full strength they have some really, really decent players playing for them at the minute,’ said O’Neill (left). ‘I think there has been an improvement in Scotland in recent times. Andy Robertson is playing for Liverpool, John McGinn is playing for Aston Villa and playing super. There are some really decent players.’

The World Cup defeat to Ukraine raised the question of whether Scotland are quite good enough.

Surveying two teams who have spent recent campaigns smarting over the success of Wales, O’Neill believes both Ireland and Scotland lack a world-class Gareth Bale type. The injection of quality in the final third which wins key games.

‘You need that difference-maker. When I was managing the Republic, Robbie Keane was ending his career. He was about 34 and he just couldn’t do it.

‘He could maybe play and score a hat-trick against Gibraltar but against the bigger sides he wouldn’t be able to do what he was capable of doing.

‘We would have cried out for a Robbie Keane to be maybe 10 years younger but we didn’t have that. At the European Championships in France, our main man was Jon Walters. You wouldn’t call Jon prolific.

‘And in the World Cup that we got to, when Denmark hammered us in the play-off — but it was a play-off game we got to — our main man was James McClean.

‘Scotland do not possess a Gareth Bale at the minute and Ireland haven’t had one since Robbie Keane in his heyday. Everyone is crying out for that and that is probably the difference now…’ l MARTIN O’NeILL was promoting Premier Sports live and exclusive coverage of Republic of Ireland v Scotland. Premier Sports is available from £9.99 per month and available on the platforms Sky, Virgin TV, Premier Player and Amazon Prime as an add-on subscription.