UNLIKE Guus Hiddink, Martin O’Neill has not had an agent touting his wares all over radio and television. O’Neill does not even have an agent, which is normally a sign of an intelligent, independent spirit.
The former Leicester City and Celtic manager has not appeared on Sky Sports News since Sven-Göran Eriksson’s time was called, but there was never likely to be a shortage of people willing to throw his hat into the ring simply because he is the best candidate. Not by such a margin that arguments cannot be made for Hiddink, Alan Curbishley and Sam Allardyce, but by far enough that Brian Barwick’s headhunting mission could be simple.
Whether O’Neill, who stepped down at Celtic last May for family reasons, will want to return to work in August is not clear and may not be known for some weeks, but his willingness to be considered for the England post should not be doubted and the FA should be patient. If he wants the job, he should get it.
Mark Palios, Barwick’s predecessor as chief executive of the FA, was ready to turn to O’Neill if Eriksson had gone to Chelsea. He admired the qualities that Gordon Strachan, the Northern Irishman’s successor at Celtic Park, once summed up thus: “You know exactly what you will get from every side led by Martin O’Neill.”
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Strachan was talking about O’Neill’s abilities as a motivator; about the work ethic, the drive, the hardness of spirit that has run though every team he has managed, from Wycombe Wanderers to Leicester and then on to Celtic.
He can be as intimidating as Brian Clough, his former manager at Nottingham Forest, but few will object to the idea that, come triumph or failure at the World Cup finals in Germany this summer, England’s senior players will return from the tournament with a sense of trepidation. And appointing a man of O’Neill’s fire to succeed a Swede with a hatred of confrontation would fit the FA’s pattern of lurching between extremes.
The players loathed Glenn Hoddle, so they brought in Kevin Keegan to give them a cuddle. He did not grasp tactics, so they brought in an urbane Swede. Eriksson’s principal failing is commonly (and daftly) regarded as his inability to breathe fire from the sidelines. What better antidote than the manic arm-waving of O’Neill? All of this is, though, to reduce him to a ranter and raver when his CV suggests so very much more.
He would not dispute Strachan’s assertion that he is “more of a manager than a coach”, relying on Steve Walford and John Robertson to do much of the graft on the training ground, but he did not build such an impressive record just by giving the team talks. He did not guide Leicester from the old first division into an established force in the Premiership without understanding team selection. And he did not lead Celtic to the Uefa Cup final, beating Liverpool on the way, or mastermind successes against Juventus and Barcelona, without knowing how to pit his wits against Europe’s best tacticians.
A concern might be his willingness to endure the media glare without blowing a gasket, but he has the intelligence, the experience and the quick wit to get the better of those exchanges. He can be argumentative. Cutting, too, as Robbie Williams discovered when O’Neill told him live on air and without a trace of irony: “You’ve done terrifically well because we all thought Gary Barlow was the one with the talent.”
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He is “foreign”, but that is not an issue in terms of understanding the English game. And those who seek to make an issue of his roots in Catholic Ulster and who question whether he would want to sing the national anthem should remember that he has accepted the MBE and the OBE.
Far ahead of all the English candidates in his credentials, O’Neill deserves the opportunity if he is in a position to accept it. If not, Hiddink’s agent should probably be rewarded for his perseverance.