When the FAI recruited Martin O’Neill as Ireland manager, it was with the hope that he would make a difference on weekends like these. Martin O’Neill’s career has been built on making a difference on weekends like these.
O’Neill’s idiosyncratic approach to management has always depended on his ability to understand how footballers think.
“If you did well for him and gave maximum commitment he would make you feel like you were the best player in the game,” his former player Matt Elliott said once. “You also feared upsetting him and he never let anybody rest on their laurels.”
This combination of confidence and unease has allowed O’Neill’s sides to compete at a level many didn’t always expect. At Leicester City and Celtic in particular, O’Neill was able to inspire his players for games where it truly mattered.
On Saturday in the Nouveau Stade de Bordeaux, Ireland will come up against a side of abundant gifts, a side with some of the world’s best players. But Belgium are a collection of players who may be vulnerable to the alchemy O’Neill has often been able to work on these occasions.
In the pre-match press conference in Bordeaux on Friday, O’Neill wouldn’t be drawn on the ongoing tension in Belgium’s squad, but he did say he wouldn’t be surprised if they went on and won the competition.
Not much craic out of the Belgians. Marc Wilmots is the only one talking pic.twitter.com/Z1A5ZczziS
— Conán Doherty (@ConanDoherty) June 17, 2016
Nobody else sees Belgium as likely winners after their defeat to Italy and the reports of disharmony that swirl around their camp, but O’Neill has been careful all week to stress the talent that exists in Ireland’s opponents on Saturday.
In contrast, Ireland are few people’s idea of tournament winners. It’s not unusual to find photographers quizzing Irish journalists after an opening training sessions as they try to put names to the pictures of the players they have just watched.
O’Neill summed up this difference on Friday when he talked again about the brilliance of the individuals in Marc Wilmots’ squad. “They would look at us and think, ‘We play at higher level’. They would feel they might have an advantage like that but it doesn’t always work out that way.”
It doesn’t always work out that way and O’Neill’s career has been built on things working out slightly differently. At his peak, O’Neill could be relied upon to send out a team which played until the end, which never believed they were beaten and had no problem overcoming difficult odds.
“I don’t know what he had but whatever it was, he made you want to run through walls for him,” Mick Yeoman once told the Leicester Mercury.
Yeoman was the physio so the effect on the players who could actually act on O’Neill’s words would have been even greater.
“I was just the physio but by the time he’d finished his team talks I could have gone out there and played. He made you feel like a king.”
This is what O’Neill does. There are plenty of stories from his career about how little time he spends on aspects of the game other managers might consider important, but O’Neill has always seen the job in terms of getting men to do the job you want them to do, under any circumstances.
Martin O'Neill caught uncharacteristically tongue tied when asked how many #BEL players would make the #IRL teamhttps://t.co/j6KXw4ePQN
— SportsJOE (@SportsJOEdotie) June 17, 2016
For Ireland, it has allowed them to defeat Germany and come through a difficult play-off against Bosnia. At half-time in Zenica, he was said to have delivered his team-talk in a voice close to a whisper, drawing the players closer to him, maybe in every sense of the word.
On Monday in Paris, Ireland’s performance in the first half especially was the perfect demonstration of O’Neill’s ability to get players right on the most important occasion.
It also showed that Ireland have players who can play, most notably Wes Hoolahan of course, but if Jeff Hendrick can continue his form, then the energy Ireland showed against Sweden could cause Belgium problems.
O’Neill will need Ireland to do the same thing in Bordeaux and again he stressed on Friday that there was only one way his side could play.
“We have to be mentally tuned in, physically as strong as we can be and we can’t afford 15- 20 minutes periods where we fall into a lull. We can’t afford to do that. Other sides, who have a lot of talent at their disposal maybe can afford to do that.”
O’Neill was recruited because he has the ability to make his players feel like kings. If they were to defeat Belgium, it would be one of the finest victories of his career, but it would also bring an end to Wilmots’ time as manager.
You don’t learn much from the 15 minutes of training that is open to the media before matches, but it was instructive to watch Ireland in the warm-up. “All the comedians up there,” Shay Given roared in the direction of the outfield players who had mocked his request for another cone as the goalkeepers did their drills.
O’Neill wandered around, talking to the goalkeepers, doing whatever it is he does in preparation for the moment when he wants to make them feel like kings.
Belgium, in contrast, went sullenly about their work. Wilmots – often criticised for doing too little – seemed to micro-manage parts of training.
He showed up at the press conference with Thibaut Courtois who was said to have been involved in a “furious altercation” with his coach after the defeat to Italy.
By Friday, the furious row had been downgraded. Courtois said he had been “a little bit frustrated” after the defeat, but dismissed the frustration as a consequence of being a winner, although the frostiness between them said otherwise.
Wilmots, it is said, spends too much time talking about his own playing career to players who are not interested, as modern players never are when someone talks about the old days.
On Friday, Wilmots was asked about this and he dismissed the talk as part of “the football circus”, an answer he had to give as he had spent an earlier part of the press conference talking about his own playing career, reminding people that he had been part of four World Cup squads.
Previously, Wilmots has been criticised for not being disciplined enough with the players and being more like a “father friend” to the group of talented players rather than a prescriptive coach, but that, too, seems to have changed.
He blamed certain players for the defeat against Italy which may be further evidence of the pressure he’s under. O’Neill has had difficult relationships with players during his career – he is too sensitive for it to be any other way – but he is unlikely to ever dump on them in public to get himself out of a bind.
As O’Neill and John O’Shea joked about Roy Keane’s beard during their press conference, it was easy to spot the differences. “I don’t believe players are leaking information,” Wilmots had said earlier, a denial of something but also a statement which showed how bad things have got.
Yet maybe it will make no difference. Maybe the collection of gifted individuals will unite in spite of their manager or perhaps their gifts will be too much for Ireland and their limitations. But Ireland’s manager won’t think so. As he has done so often in his career, on Saturday just before kick-off, Martin O’Neill will draw his players close and tell them what he thinks. And when he is done, they’ll agree with him and believe that anything is possible.
