McGuinness to Celtic?

[video=youtube;gAjQrnImT_k]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAjQrnImT_k[/video]

DONEGAL manager Jim McGuinness could end up double-jobbing next year as a move to Celtic grew closer last night.

McGuinness, 39, is being lined up for a PART-TIME role with Celtic’s youth academy, where he would use his sports psychology background to develop players.
And a part-time position could allow the All-Ireland-winning boss to stay on with Donegal too.
The Glenties man has a Masters in sports psychology from John Moores University in Liverpool and also studied in Tralee IT and Jordanstown.
In recent weeks there has been growing speculation linking him with a move to Celtic.
He visited Celtic Park earlier this year and last month admitted he would be open to potential offers.
He said: “If a professional football team or any professional sporting organisation come in and say they’re interested in working with you or interested in talking to you...
“I’m a young man. I have three kids, a young family, so it’s obviously something you’d have to consider.
“My background is in sports science and in psychology, and that’s transferable to any sport.”
Celtic boss Neil Lennon (right) attended September’s All-Ireland final when Donegal triumphed over Mayo, and at the time spoke highly of McGuinness.
He said: “He is a very intelligent guy and very insightful on all sports really. He came across very impressively.”
Losing McGuinness would be a massive blow to Donegal’s chances of retaining the Sam Maguire trophy. But he has explored the possibility of remaining at the helm, and that has been one of his main concerns in the negotiations.
It is unclear exactly how such an arrangement would work but it could see his No 2 Rory Gallagher take on a bigger role within the Donegal management.
McGuinness is hot property right now after leading Donegal to only their second All-Ireland title. He was a player the first time they did so in 1992.
He managed his county to an All-Ireland Under-21 final in 2010 before taking charge of the seniors in 2011. Donegal’s 2010 season had ended in a nine-point defeat to Armagh but, in his first year, McGuinness guided them to an Ulster title and an All-Ireland semi-final appearance.
The defensive tactics that he deployed in the semi-final against Dublin were criticised, but the evolution of this Donegal team during his watch has seen his stock sky-rocket.
He has previously worked with soccer clubs Finn Harps and Derry City and also spent time with golfer Paul McGinley — who was left hugely impressed.
McGinley said: “I spent a few hours with Jim and it was enlightening. He’s ground-breaking, innovative.
“Having listened to a lot of sportspeople over the years, Jim was one of the standout guys I have met.
“I came away thinking I would absolutely love to play for this guy. His outlook is inspirational.”

 

The one on the left is a different Jimmy.

 

don't joke, that Jimmy couldn't get to Donegal for their celebrations so they just got another random black guy.

 

To coin a phrase....yes!

 

I reckon it is all balls and he'll stay where he is.

That said, the 3rd year with any GAA team is proving to be the hardest over recent years.

 

I don't want to sound like I am against this as I do think such a position is good for the club but whilst we don't have a full time doctor I think resources might be directed into that first?

 

You mean like when Dylan McGeough was lying unconscious on the grass in Philly?

 

From the Gherald.

And my cards on the table, Donegal were ****ing disgusting in 2011. Rank rotten negative hoorbags.

There's black and white . . . and then there's McGuinness
Brendan Crossan
TWO years ago, Jim McGuinness was the revolutionary whom Gaelic football didn't want.

The game was fine the way it was. It didn't need a giddy rebellion in the rolling hills of Ireland's north-west.

Gaelic football's aristocracy in the south wheezed every time McGuinness's Donegal team took to the field last year. Donegal were outcasts who had disobeyed the game's orthodox teachings. They were pilloried for playing a uniquely calibrated defensive system of football.

Donegal were one big turn-off. Of course, successful teams that went before McGuinness had been innovative; forward-thinking coaches began viewing the game from a different angle. In the last decade, some coaches placed greater emphasis on defending. Forwards began shuttling back into defensive positions – but nobody placed as many players in defensive areas as McGuinness.

In their 2011 All-Ireland semi-final defeat by Dublin – it ended 0-8 to 0-6, a desperately austere, low-scoring encounter in Gaelic football terms – Donegal, for long periods, played all but one of their 15 starting players in defensive areas. The face of Gaelic football had changed forever.

There was outrage among the GAA punditry. The game was no longer about individual duels in designated areas of the field. The new version of Gaelic football, practised by McGuinness, had morphed into a puzzle about space and how best to utilise it.

There are thinkers of the game – and there is Jim McGuinness. In his first year, he was lambasted for playing negative football. In 2012, he was lauded for transforming Donegal into the most devastating counter-attacking team in the country, and undoubtedly the fittest there has been.

To understand Donegal's defensive tactics, you first had to understand Donegal. They hadn't won a meaningful game in three years before McGuinness took over. "It was like a dog that had been battered," he said. "You call it and it won't come to you. That was the kind of situation we were in."

Before the former county player assumed the reins, the Donegal players had nurtured an unflattering image of being the party boys of Gaelic football, a talented crew, but never keen on putting the hard yards in. That would change irreversibly under McGuinness.

The Glenties clubman was destined to be a coach. "I started coaching when I was about 16 with under-12 teams at the [Glenties] club," he explained. "It was always something that I enjoyed doing."

During his playing days, McGuinness was full of flair. Back then, there was spontaneity about Gaelic football. The game was an entirely different spectacle.

McGuinness was part of the Donegal side that last won the All-Ireland title in 1992. Ironically, McGuinness the player and McGuinness the manager reside at different ends of the spectrum.

Throughout his playing career he was an engaging, heart-on-the-sleeve personality for the media. Armed with a diploma in sports studies and a degree and a masters in sports psychology, he had applied for the Donegal job three times before he was successful, but served an invaluable apprenticeship with the county's under-21 side.

When he took over, Donegal may not have been the most charismatic of sides, but their manager had bags of the stuff. McGuinness doesn't walk into a room. He swoons. He can work a room of journalists with the best of them.

Anyone who meets the 39-year-old will be impressed. He is articulate, engaging, sincere and at times funny; but there can be a sharp, unforgiving side too. At the end of the 2011 campaign, McGuinness controversially axed one of his key players, Kevin Cassidy, for revealing minor details of Donegal's new regime in a local GAA book.

While Cassidy was exceptionally generous in his praise of the new manager in the book, McGuinness nevertheless deemed the player's actions as a breach of trust. Cassidy was gone. But it didn't end there.

Moments after he had guided Donegal to an unlikely All-Ireland title in September, McGuinness refused to carry out his post-match press conference until the book's author, also a working journalist, was ejected from the room. It was an unseemly and desperately ill-timed episode.

McGuinness shares a nerdish love for many team sports. It's been a long-held ambition of his to become involved in professional sport. He didn't have a day job while managing Donegal last year.

Nobody on this side of the Irish Sea expects McGuinness to be anything other than a resounding success as Celtic's new performance analyst. There is, however, the nagging feeling that perhaps he should relinquish the Donegal reins.

"Rather than try to hold on to the Donegal job," wrote Armagh's All-Ireland winner turned respected pundit, Oisin McConville, "he should walk away . . . I don't think it is possible to serve two masters".

McGuinness insists he won't miss one Donegal training session in 2013 and that his Celtic role is initially a "couple of days a week". Knowing McGuinness's meticulous nature, he will probably have already enrolled in a time management crash-course.

In McGuinness, the Scottish champions have hired a radical thinker and an immensely likeable individual who will do whatever it takes to succeed in his chosen field. Celtic's academy players will not have realised it yet, but they couldn't have asked for a better mentor than the Glenties native.