O’Neill backs Everton boss
“I think that Everton would be disappointed with that and I think the manager’s gone yesterday to try to defuse all those things,” said O’Neill. “I think Seamus is pretty content at the moment with how he’s doing but also what he’s doing and who he’s doing it for – Everton.
“They’ve given him that opportunity and you would have to say that, for the foreseeable future, you can only see him getting stronger at Everton. He’s been absolutely superb for them and you’re hoping when the big games come around for us, he’s perfectly fit.”
O’Neill said he fervently hopes that Nottingham Forest’s Andy Reid – currently out with a hamstring injury which followed quickly after a hernia operation – will be available for Ireland’s summer programme.
“From a distance it seems he wants to come back more quickly than perhaps he should do,” O’Neill observed.
“Overall it hasn’t stopped him from having a fantastic season for Forest.
The reports coming through from everyone who has watched him on my behalf say he’s been terrific and outstanding every single week.”
O’Neill is also hopeful that Darron Gibson will be available for the summer friendlies but accepts that, after the midfielder’s long lay-off, Everton’s wishes will have to be taken into consideration.
The manager suggested that games in the United States in early June – against Costa Rica and Portugal – are “relatively close” to being confirmed. If and when they are, it would mean that, with fixtures at home to Turkey and away to Italy in London already pencilled in, Ireland would be playing four friendlies between May 25 and June 10, racking up some serious air miles in the process.
“The schedule for me is not a problem, the more games I can get the better,” he said. “So from a selfish viewpoint, great.”
But O’Neill was also at pains to stress that there is “a balancing act” involved in taking into consideration what will be good for the players at the end of a long season. One possibility he has considered is rotating his squad to some extent between the European and US games.
O’Neill also revealed that he looking into the possibility of a friendly game in September before Ireland open their Euro 2016 campaign away to Georgia on the 7th of the month.
As to the announcement yesterday that Germany will host their Euro qualifier against Ireland on October 14 in Gelsenkirchen, the manager agreed that it doesn’t really make a blind bit of difference where his team play the group favourites in their homeland.
“I’m not sure that it would do, absolutely not,” he smiled. “Listen, it will be tough, we know that.
“We’ve got three of the first four games away from home so it’s a tough old start for us.”
O’Neill was speaking in Tralee in support of a fund-raising initiative by the Kerry District League to facilitate the installation of an all-weather pitch at their Mount Hawkpark headquarters.
It meant the Ireland manager got to rub shoulders again with Minister For Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht Jimmy Deenihan, the two men having first encountered each other in an All-Ireland Minor Football semi-final in Croke Park in 1970, when Deenihan’s Kerry saw off O’Neill’s Derry.
Recalled O’Neill: “He didn’t mention it, and I think he was just being kind to me, that I actually missed a penalty kick in the match. I was pretty distressed afterwards and if I’d known he was going to live for 44 years after, I’d have gone into the dressing room and killed him.”
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