Whatever this magic is around Martin O’Neill that all his past and current players allude to but fail to explain, his ability to properly sniff out the atmosphere probably best sums up that effect.
Never has a man been able to gauge the temperature of a room quite like Martin O’Neill can and perhaps no-one in football has ever been able to reset or readjust the timer as quickly and as efficiently as the Derry man.
That’s what he does. Whatever about the mystique of the training ground manager, showing up later in the week or not being clear on tactics or formation, O’Neill has consistently ensured that his broth simmers whenever he wants it to, whatever the hell is in that broth. He just knows, whether it’s innate or trained, how to work the temperature and keep an eye on it with effortless perfection.
He’s like an obsessed parent commanding complete and total control over the house heating system. Don’t touch the f**king thermostat – I told you not to touch it. O’Neill and only O’Neill knows how to work it best.
The final World Cup qualifying preparations pic.twitter.com/tXdw5mnqH0
— SportsJOE (@SportsJOEdotie) November 10, 2017
On Friday night, you got another little taster of what O’Neill does best.
There seemed to be a bit of stiffness around the squad during their open training session at Parken Stadium – if it wasn’t nerves it was just a realisation of this massive occasion and even bigger opportunity. It didn’t help that the roof was closed to protect the already soft and mudding pitch.
The manager came along, dipped his finger in the water and got to work. If it’s too cool, O’Neill would waste no time in lighting a fire under your arse and a lot of his enigma is around that fear factor – like the school teacher you just know not to step out of line with even though you don’t really know why.
If it’s too warm, if it’s bubbling over, that’s alright too because he’s also nature’s greatest cooling agent.
So he’d have sensed the mood in the camp and restored the equilibrium. He joked in his press conference, he discussed the best way to make tea, he smiled, he talked up Robbie Brady beside him and he was on the pitch talking to players and allowed them to muck around with one-touch games and the likes.
Nothing heavy, no serious message. The manager was relaxed and it gradually started to feed into the rest of the team who were back to laughing and slating each other by the time the media got kicked off the field.
More interestingly though, O’Neill didn’t feel the need to swoon over the opposition too much this time. He didn’t feel the need to talk down Ireland. Those are almost two pillars that hold up an O’Neill press conference.
This was different. Friday night was about getting it into the heads of everyone that the Irish can do it.
“You’re in a qualification game, it’s going to be tough,” the Derry native said.“They are the seeded side The expectation is that they will come through but we’ve overcome some adversity in the past few years.“They’ve got some fine players and so we have we. We have as well. The young man to my left hand side [Brady] is pretty decent.“They’ve some big players playing in the major leagues and that’s obviously a big advantage but we’ve overcome these disadvantages in the past.”
“If you watch a lot of Denmark, there’s a similar pattern most of the games. They might have a stronger choice of player, eventually, in the sense they’ve players on the bench playing in the big leagues around Europe. I don’t necessarily concur with that.
“Competitively speaking, I’ve been in this national job for three years. It’s our 24th qualification game, we’ve played a lot of teams and there’s a genuine pattern between a lot of sides.
“We played Bosnia, we knew how they would play. Overall the pattern is the same and the Danish pattern is pretty well similar as well too. The Danish pattern is similar, we know how to expect with them.”
By the time it came around to asking Brady if Denmark will be successful in breaking the Irish spirit – something they spoke about – Brady just smiled.
O’Neill’s job was done.
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