The 56-year-old rejected an offer to become Blackburn Rovers’ full-time boss earlier this month
Michael O’Neill has signed a fresh contract as Northern Ireland boss – and this time it’s “personal”.
The 56-year-old rejected an offer to become Blackburn Rovers’ full-time boss earlier this month, having guided the club to Championship safety during a short-term spell at Ewood Park. On Wednesday, the Irish FA confirmed O’Neill had signed a four-year extension to his existing deal, keeping him at the helm until 2032.
And the Northern Ireland manager says the pull of the international job, and the chance to develop his young squad, outweighed the attraction of remaining in England.
“The most important thing is that I love doing this job,” said O’Neill. “I’m committed to it. It is challenging at times, but it’s very personal as well.
“The people at Blackburn, they made me a great offer to stay. Suhail Shaikh, who runs the club there, is a really good man. He did everything possible to convince me to stay.
“But I just felt that it wasn’t the right thing for me to step away from the Northern Ireland job more than anything else.
“As attractive as the Blackburn situation was, I just felt that I wanted to continue in this role. It’s a different type of job. I enjoy the group of players that we have. I enjoy continuing to work with this group of players.
“And obviously the opportunity to try and develop the team further and get to a major tournament is something that I think would probably supersede anything I could do in club football. That was a big factor in it.
“The IFA were really positive about extending my contract, which I’m grateful for. As I say, it was not a job that I felt I wanted to step away from at this moment in time.
“Club jobs are different. They have a different nature to them. There’s a short-termism to them and that’s the nature of football now.
“So it wasn’t a difficult decision for me to stay here and obviously to extend my deal as well.”
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