Things can always get worse- the proof
O’Leary: I’d love to manage Ireland
By Liam Mackey
DAVID O’LEARY smiles as he recalls how Steve Staunton broke a surprising piece of news to him just over a year ago.
“He came up to see me at Aston Villa,” says the former Irish international who was then still manager of the Birmingham club. “I didn’t know what it was about. He came in, sat down with a cup of coffee and said to me, ‘You know what I’m here about’. And, honest to god, until he said it I did not know that it was to tell me he had the Irish job and to speak to me about (Villa reserve team coach) Kevin MacDonald being his assistant.”
O’ Leary confesses that his initial reaction to the news was mixed.
“One thing I was delighted about was that it was one of us, that an Irish man had got the job, not that I’ve anything else against anyone else coming in. But the news also surprised me because I thought, well, he has no youth team experience or any experience. So I just wished him well.”
Staunton’s in-at-the-deep-end introduction to management contrasts sharply with O’Leary’s own rise through the gaffer ranks. Unlike the latter, Staunton is being forced to learn on the job.
“Big style,” O’ Leary agrees. “He’s in the frontline straight away. I was very lucky in that, although I was offered jobs through my association with Arsenal, when I look back I was so delighted that George Graham asked me to go as his number two (at Leeds United). Because in those first few years of learning the game, I made so many mistakes. But his opinion was the one that mattered and it was a great learning experience for me being able to work under him.”
O’Leary reckons that, inevitably, Staunton will be better-equipped for the Irish job by the time the World Cup qualifiers come around but he doesn’t rule out qualification for next year’s Euro finals, despite Ireland’s depressing start to the campaign.
“With the points still available nothing is impossible but they’ve got to start winning games,” he says. “You’ve heard it before, until mathematically it can’t be done, there’s always a chance. You’ve got Duff, you’ve got Keane — there are matchwinners in this team.”
Longer-term, one of the heroes of Genoa admits that he himself covets the top job in Irish football.
“I hope one day to be able to manage my country,” he says. “That would be the icing on the cake for me. That’s what you dream about. But, for me, you’ve got to get day to day club management out of your system first. You even hear Mourinho saying that he wants to manage Portugal eventually. I still feel I have unfinished business at club level and then I see the national job as the senior job after you’ve done your footwork around the league.”
Which is not, O’ Leary hastens to add, an implied criticism of Staunton.
“Everybody is made different,” he says. “Look at Marco Van Basten in Holland or Franz Beckenbauer in Germany who both went straight into international management.”
O’ Leary has had plenty of time to reflect on his future ambitions since parting company with Villa in July. “I’ve enjoyed my break,” he says. “The last year at Villa was very, very hard. It’s all about investment. I was trying to keep it afloat for somebody else to come in and buy it. We all knew what was needed. Money talks in this game. I was hoping that what has happened to Martin (O’ Neill) would happen to me eventually. That was the secret. But Martin is the one, and good luck to him.”
While he awaits the beckoning finger from another club (or country?), O’Leary keeps in touch with the game, regularly attending matches and doing coaching and media work, especially overseas.
But yesterday he was back in his home town on a special mission, helping the Mater Private Hospital publicise their acquisition — the first in these islands — of a cutting edge Dual Source Scanner, which is hailed as a breakthrough in the diagnosis of heart disease. For O’ Leary, there was a personal dimension to the day, because it was in the Mater that his father Christy was treated when taken seriously ill six years ago. “I never thought I’d see my dad back alive and well,” he recalls, “and it was all down to the people at this hospital.”
But even in this setting, the world of football can intrude. While O’Leary was being brought down to be shown the scanner, his old Irish colleague Kevin Moran happened to phone him on his mobile.
“When I told him where I was, he laughed,” O’ Leary relates. “Once, when we were playing Chile, Kevin missed a ball and headed me — and it was in here I came and they looked after me very well.”
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