Leaping, tracksuited into the technical area sky, one hand clenched in triumph, Martin O’Neill looked every inch the ambitious young manager who made Filbert Street a fortress.
It’s two decades since he started at Leicester City, where he properly launched a career that took him to Glasgow, Birmingham and the North East of England.
Hot beds of football with fierce rivalries and a voracious media.
Don’t let the bookish trained lawyer with a penchant for shoe-gazing fool you – O’Neill adores the cut and thrust of club management.
Spiky, argumentative and fiercely competitive, O’Neill was in his element sparring with opposing managers, the press and his own players, when they were foolish enough to cross him.
Even at Sunderland, where that spark seemed to be extinguished by Ellis Short’s brand of ownership, you could still see it. Once, in a post-match briefing, O’Neill spotted a few of us keeping a close eye on the evening kick-off playing on a television in the corner. Unimpressed with not having the undivided attention of the room he stood up and left.
WATCH: Martin O'Neill outlines how young players will be the bedrock of Ireland team https://t.co/ATmZMntzNC
— SportsJOE (@SportsJOEdotie) June 27, 2016
That spark returned in France. As he touched back down on the soon to be torn up turf of his Lille dugout after Robbie Brady’s headed winner against Italy the old glint could be seen in the eye.
There have been times, since O’Neill replaced Giovanni Trapattoni in late 2013 when that glint, if not absent, was at least hard to spot.
At times the Republic of Ireland manager has had to defend himself against accusations of lack of imagination, if not laziness, for visiting the same London-based clubs twice in quick succession.
He was also criticised for not making a more concerted effort to charm Jack Grealish and his father. At times some supporters were left wondering why Denis O’Brien was paying the former Celtic boss so much money to be the manager of Ireland.
In the last month we got a sense of O’Neill’s value. In a tournament setting, where games come thick and fast and players are not fleeting visitors but instead constant charges, the Irish boss displayed again his ability to inspire a team, instil a game plan and work out problems on the hoof.
We saw it in Robbie Brady excelling in three separate positions in two different systems, in the uncanny man management that saw O’Neill ignore the clamour for James McCarthy’s head and instead double down on the Everton midfielder against Italy and drop Glenn Whelan instead.
O’Neill thrives in the pressure cooker of constant competition. The more matches, the less you have to stress about set-piece routines and defensive shapes. Neil Lennon says he never practiced a corner kick in 10 years under O’Neill at Leicester and then Celtic.
Training sessions in Versailles rarely lasted more than an hour. Players never knew the team more than 90 minutes before kick-off.
Speaking before the team’s departure from Trianon Palace on Monday morning, O’Neill revealed the greatest lesson learned by his squad in France was in the second half against Belgium, when the concession of one goal led to a panic that soon saw Ireland 3-0 down and beaten.
“We lost our composure a little bit. You talk about learning, when you concede a goal, it is not the end of the world. You just get composure back again and stay in the game. These are the things you learn from,” he said.
That has always been O’Neill’s way, learn by doing. If you engender the right atmosphere, spirit and cohesiveness within the right group of footballers you can achieve great things – like win two League Cups with Leicester or reach Europa League finals with Celtic.
However this is not the reality of international management. O’Neill and his players will now go their separate ways before meeting up again at the end of August ahead of the opening World Cup qualifier against Serbia in Belgrade.
O’Neill’s contract ended “one and half minutes” after the final whistle in Lyon on Sunday but he has agreed verbally to lead this team towards Russia. To do that he will have to return to the life of an international manager. Watching a lot of players without managing them, talking to a lot of players without influencing their moods in the long run, selecting a lot of players without knowing for sure how they will react in certain situations.
Marco Tardelli’s comments about Irish players not understanding football as “an intellectual matter” eventually attracted O’Neill’s ire after the 1-0 win over the Azzurri – “Tonight’s performance against his nation might have put that to rest, at least for a day or two anyway.”
But it was another of Tardelli’s assertions – that Jeff Hendrick would thrive at an Italian club – that popped up on Monday, of a fashion.
Asked if some of his players had put themselves in the shop window, O’Neill was transported back to his previous existence, where the current and future employers of his footballers was of more immediate consequence to him.
“As a club manager with players on international duty, you would have some international managers saying, ‘This player shouldn’t be playing for this club, he should be playing for somebody else’.
“It used to irritate me to high heavens, so I am not going to do that. Performances speak for themselves and who knows what might happen,” said O’Neill.
Except he isn’t a club manager, he is the Ireland manager and helping to extricate Jeff Hendrick from his Derby morass would be of huge benefit to his hopes of enjoying a Russian summer in 2018.
Watch: Martin O'Neill reveals his favourite fan moment of #Euro2016 https://t.co/Titg64Ccza
— SportsJOE (@SportsJOEdotie) June 27, 2016
Imagine one of the shining lights of the Irish midfield was no longer a bit-part player at a Championship club but a starter at Empoli, Sampdoria or Torino. Think what it would do for the reputation of the team, contemplate what it might mean for Hendrick’s own confidence, training techniques and general quality of life.
Ditto getting his buddy Brady back into the Premier League, or captain-in-waiting Seamus Coleman to a Champions League club. O’Neill’s loyalty is to his players. He can’t make all this happen, but he should do everything in his gift to influence these situations.
He may not have as much time with them as he did with Lennon, or Emile Heskey, Henrik Larsson or Chris Sutton – but he can dedicate his time to making sure everything he can influence is geared towards Ireland topping an eminently toppable group that features Austria and Wales as the big kahunas.
O’Neill said he feels he now knows these players better than he did in May. Knows what they are capable of, knows they are built for tournament football.
“It was reminiscent of club football when tournament started and we were together for period of time,” he said with relish. “Tournament football, I thought that we were capable of playing it.”
Now he is back to the part-time grind of a long qualifying campaign, which begins in Belgrade. Roy Keane will more than likely stay on, he and his assistant will divvy up England, above and below Watford Gap, and speak on the phone.
The close quarters they have kept since meeting up ahead of the Netherlands friendly will be limited to a week here or there in west Dublin and the occasional scouting trip.
O’Neill is confident his players are not only better now than they were two years ago but they also know each other better.
That might seem obvious, but familiarity can breed contempt also. Keane and O’Neill have avoided that – it was instructive to hear O’Neill on Monday pay tribute to the influence of the likes of Glenn Whelan, John O’Shea and Robbie Keane in the last week.
“We wouldn’t be without them,” said O’Neill. “Only in a tournament you realise how influential they can be.”
That spurned stalwarts such as these were so valuable to management hints that Ireland achieved in France a similar morale to O’Neill’s Leicester or Celtic.
The challenge now for O’Neill is to maintain this morale and keep developing this team despite less time with his players and less of the old guard around to help.
Do that and he can be leaping, clenched fist, in Russia two years from now.
