Martin O'Neill believes he was treated like 'an outsider' as Republic of Ireland manager

Derry native Martin O’Neill believes an anti-Ulster agenda in the press was a constant during his time in charge of the Republic of Ireland alongside Roy Keane with the Republic of Ireland.

The 1982 Northern Ireland World Cup star believes his job alongside Keane is still undervalued by many and that the pair were not given a fair crack of the whip.

The former Celtic and Leicester City boss took the Republic of Ireland job alongside Keane in 2013. The Irish national team had just failed to qualify for the World Cup in Russia but O’Neill and Keane took the side to the knockout stages of the European Championships in 2016.

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The subsequent World Cup qualifying campaign ended with a horrendous 5-1 defeat at home to Denmark in the play-offs and after the Nations League campaign in 2018 ended in relegation, O’Neill and Keane left the job.

“They were good years that were under appreciated by some,” O’Neill told the Telegraph. “Listen, I think now, when you look back at 2016 when we qualified for the Euros, I had a great, great time.

“Going to France (Euros 2016), that was as big a moment as I had in my career. I have to bring in Roy Keane here. If you think of all the things he achieved in his wonderful career, he describes those days as some of the most enjoyable of his life. He hasn’t just said that once, I’ve heard him say that numerous times.

“It’s right up there with everything I did. But I never won over the media. I don’t know why, but I said in my book I was made to feel like an outsider. I was called the Ulsterman, I’ve tried to explain this… just recently I heard an Irish commentator saying we have had outsiders as managers, we had [Giovanni] Trapattoni and we had O’Neill.

“I’m definitely an Irishman. I’ve always considered myself an Irishman. No doubt about that. It does hurt me, of course it does. Deep down, at the end of it all, I honestly felt, from pretty early on, they were almost looking for the team to lose so they could have a go at me.”

O’Neill, now 72, is now head of the English League Manager’s Association, and believes the years since have proven how well he did in the job. He is also very clear on the results of the ‘Stephen Kenny experiment’.

“I think they have started to realise the job is a lot more difficult than they thought it was. They had an experiment with a manager (Stephen Kenny) that didn’t work, whatever they say, it didn’t work.

“They haven’t been near a play-off game for years now.”

O’Neill’s last job in football was as manager of Nottingham Forest but that is something he has huge regrets over.

“Do I regret going to Forest? Yes, absolutely. If I’d known we would win the last three games of the season and I would be called in a week into pre-season training to be told the way I was running the football club was not the way they wanted to run it – which is how they put it – I wouldn’t have taken the job in the first place,” said O’Neill who now reluctantly accepts his management career is at an end.

“I had no idea when I left Forest that it would be my last job in management.”

You can read the full interview with O’Neill in the Telegraph here.

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