Owen Polley: You’re the one for the Northern Ireland team, Michael O'Neill

Northern Ireland football fans were jubilant last week, after the Irish Football Association (IFA) appointed Michael O’Neill as the senior team’s manager for the second time.
The crowning achievement of his first spell in charge was reaching the 2016 Euros in France. Above Michael O'Neill after Northern Ireland's second goal of a Euro 2016, Group C match in Lyon on June 16 of that year. Pic: Nick Potts/PA WireThe crowning achievement of his first spell in charge was reaching the 2016 Euros in France. Above Michael O'Neill after Northern Ireland's second goal of a Euro 2016, Group C match in Lyon on June 16 of that year. Pic: Nick Potts/PA Wire
The crowning achievement of his first spell in charge was reaching the 2016 Euros in France. Above Michael O'Neill after Northern Ireland's second goal of a Euro 2016, Group C match in Lyon on June 16 of that year. Pic: Nick Potts/PA Wire

The Green and White Army’s (GAWA) foot soldiers welcome their hero back to Windsor Park in March, when Northern Ireland plays Finland in the first home game of a new campaign. In the meantime, they will enjoy replaying their memories of his first spell in charge.

The crowning achievement of that era, of course, was qualifying for the 2016 European Championships in France.

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The decisive result was a 3-1 win in Belfast against Greece, when captain Steven Davis scored two goals and Josh Magennis netted his first international strike. The ‘GAWA’ stopped the traffic that night, after supporters gathered in Bradbury Place to celebrate victory with flags and flares.

The result meant a new generation of fans would get a chance to watch Northern Ireland in a major tournament. They travelled to France in tens of thousands and the highlight of that competition came one delirious evening in Lyon, when Gareth McAuley and Niall McGinn scored goals that beat Ukraine 2-0.

In the knockout stages, Northern Ireland were eliminated by Wales in cruel circumstances, after McAuley turned the ball into his own net during a narrow 1-0 defeat. But the squad rightly returned to Belfast as heroes. The players tossed O’Neill into the air during a homecoming party at the Titanic Quarter and the manager went on to win the BBC’s Coach of the Year at the 2016 Sports Personality of the Year awards.

O’Neill’s team may well have qualified for the World Cup in Russia in 2018 too, had a Romanian referee not wrongly awarded a penalty to Switzerland during the first leg of a play-off. The official, Ovidiu Hategan, later admitted that he had made a mistake and midfielder Corry Evans had not handled the ball.

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The resulting goal was enough to put Northern Ireland out of the competition. But the tie would still have gone to extra-time, had the Swiss not scrambled a header from Corry’s brother, Jonny, off the line during the dying minutes of the return match in Basel.

There were so many other standout moments during Michael’s previous spell in charge. Northern Ireland took the lead against Portugal in 2012 through Niall McGinn and spoiled Ronaldo’s 100th cap celebration by drawing 1-1 in Porto. Martin Paterson scored an unlikely winner against Russia, the largest country in the world. The team achieved an away victory in Hungary, coming from behind to kickstart the Euro 2016 qualifying campaign. And Josh Magennis headed a goal in Rotterdam in 2019, that made it look, for five glorious minutes, like Northern Ireland was going to beat Holland away.

Unfortunately, in this country, there will always be begrudgers. A handful of people suggested that O’Neill should not get the job, because he left Northern Ireland in 2020 to manage Stoke City in the English Championship. That’s a short-sighted and spiteful outlook.

O’Neill spent nine years managing Northern Ireland. He rejected the chance to become Scotland coach, which would have involved a bigger salary and higher profile, because of his commitment to the IFA.

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Even after he joined Stoke, a former Premier League club with enormous potential, he insisted that his new employers release him for Northern Ireland’s Euro 2020 play-off matches against Bosnia-Herzegovina.

That ultimately didn’t happen, due to the Covid pandemic, but O’Neill wasn’t like Lawrie Sanchez, who abandoned his squad in the middle of a qualifying campaign. He showed commendable loyalty and risked his own career for the benefit of the team.

Although Northern Ireland was drawn in a favourable group for the upcoming Euro 2024 qualifying competition, and fans are hopeful that they could do well, Michael will not have an easy job.

We are a small country with a limited pool of players, and some of them opt to defect to a rival association. Many of the players who helped Northern Ireland reach the Euros have retired or are approaching the end of their careers. The squad, as the football cliche has it, is in ‘transition’.

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The IFA tasked O’Neill’s predecessor, Ian Baraclough, with introducing a new generation of talent to the international set-up, and he did that with some success. As a result, O’Neill will be able to select exciting young players like Conor Bradley, Ali McCann and Daniel Ballard, all of whom have established themselves in or around the starting eleven.

Northern Ireland plays Denmark, Finland. Kazakhstan and San Marino in the upcoming qualifying tournament. O’Neill won’t regard any of these teams as unbeatable, but he will know that we’ve not beaten an opponent of the Danes’ and Finns’ stature for some years.

The manager’s previous tenure was not marked by eye-catching victories against the likes of England and Spain, but Northern Ireland usually beat sides they were expected to beat, as well as achieving great results against countries at, or just above, our own level. That took tactical acumen, organisation and pragmatism that have been lacking in recent performances.

After a demoralising Nations League campaign, the Green and White Army go into the new year with optimism. This appointment was resoundingly a risk worth taking for the IFA.

To adapt a song that England supporters currently sing about Gareth Southgate: “Michael you’re the one / Now you’re coming home / We’ll be taking on the world again.”