HEIMIR HALLGRÍMSSON is open to the idea of being a joint manager with John O’Shea down the line.
The new Ireland boss travelled to Waterford to speak with O’Shea in a bid to convince him to be part of his coaching staff.
The former Manchester Unitedstar had made no secret of his desire to land the job on a full-time basis after four games in interim charge.
Hallgrímsson worked as a joint boss with Swede Lars Lagerback for one campaign with Iceland, having previously assisted him, and subsequently replaced him.
And, although no such suggestion was made by the FAI, Hallgrímsson is open to the idea and O’Shea being on an equal footing and then succeeding him down the line.
Hallgrímsson said: “I would be open.
“For me, that worked, but it needs to be two persons who really understand each other, because it has not worked in many cases.”
He intended to lay out that career path for O’Shea in their talks on Monday.
Hallgrímsson said: “My way into national team coaching was exactly like that and I think the assistant coach should be the one that carries the knowledge to the next cycle.
“To have a guy that has been doing the things with us is probably always the best one to take over, if you want continuity, growth and development.
“That kind of makes sense but it’s always difficult to have been the head coach and then stepping down to be assistant coach. That takes a good character to do that.”
He revealed he had been due to succeed Lagersback for the Euro 2016 campaign only for the Swede and the Icelandic FA to decide they wanted him to remain on.
So, the pair joined forces, masterminding their progress to the quarter-finals– overcoming England along the way – in their first appearances at a major tournament.
Hallgrímsson said: “He wanted to stay, everybody wanted to keep him, so it was more or less him who said ‘this is a good idea’.
“We never thought about it until he mentioned it. He had done it before with Sweden.
“He was by far by biggest mentor, an honest person, really good to work with, so for him it was easy and you need to probably know each other pretty well in order to do this.
“We just postponed the transition because everybody liked what he was doing, It was just a new scenario.”
And Hallgrímsson was grateful of that apprenticeship before taking the reins on his own and leading Iceland to their first World Cup, in 2018.
He said: “He had the biggest influence on how I think as a coach, working with him for close to five years was an absolute privilege for me.
“I think he took Sweden to six or seven finals and went with Nigeria to the World Cup and, after Iceland, he coached Norway as well.
“It was an experience that kind of prevents you from doing all the mistakes that you need to do to become a good national team coach as he could always say ‘ah, this happened to me once when I was with Sweden, or Nigeria’ and I don’t think this was right, so we’ll do this’.
“That’s both in regards to tactics and the working environment. It was so good to have a mentor of this magnitude and experience.”
LATE DEVELOPER
That helped build on the knowledge he had first acquired alongside Polish coach ****** at IBV when he had taken a break from playing at 17 before returning to the pitch two years later.
He recalled: “I was a late developer and could not make it into the team. So I stopped playing for two years before I took my growth spurt. The club said ‘why don’t I become an assistant coach? And for two years I was assistant to him.
“He is dead now but was a few years on my island and did a lot and created a lot of good players.
“I really fell in love with coaching and how he did things. It was not about winning, it was about finding the correct tasks for each individual. The way he coached individuals at a young age, 10 and 12, it was fascinating.
“He wasn’t even thinking about winning matches. It was about developing players. Since then I have tried to do similar things. You always like to win but, for youth, development is the most important thing.
“If we stay for one year, two years or 10 years, leave your shirt in a better place and leave the federation with more knowledge and the coaches with more knowledge, or just help them and give them something I know etc. In the end, the shirt should be in a better place.”
If that is a more long-term goal, things occupying him in the short term are the search for somewhere for him and wife Irish to live with Malahide the odds-on favourite.
Sunday night was spent watching the Euro 2024 final with one eye on what England will offer when they come to the Aviva Stadium on September 7, for his first game in charge.
He said: “My thoughts are just the same. They have produced a really strong team, difficult to beat, but even though I wanted England to win I thought Spain deserved to win this tournament.”
He is hopeful rather than expectant that the timing of the game might play into Ireland’s hands.
Before then, he is hoping to familiarise himself with as many of his players as possible, although this is more likely to be done online rather than in person.
He said: “Rather than travelling to one player and then another, you can do a Zoom to get more players done in one day. I don’t have a lot of time.
“I’ll probably need some assistance selecting the squad for the first game. Hopefully we’ll have the people who have been around.”
The 57-year-old has said the most striking thing about the tournament was the youth of the players who made decisive contributions, most notably Spain’s Lamine Yamal, who turned 17 on Saturday.
That followed a similar theme at the last World Cup.
Hallgrímsson has inherited plenty of players still in the infancy of their careers but he stressed a blend was his preference.
He said: “The best team is a mixture of experience and younger players. Normally, the young are more fearless and show their skills. To mix it is the best way because they need to rely on stability and guidance behind them from experienced players.”
Interestingly, after being in Tolka Park on Thursday night and Dalymount Park on Friday, he said he believed it would be hard for young players to emerge in the ‘rough and tough’ League of Ireland although its age profile is much lower than in previous eras.
And, whilst he used the ancestry rule to good effect for Jamaica, he said: “I haven’t dug deep but I have friends who say ‘this guy, this guy, this guy’.
“Probably we can tap into that but that’s not the priority for me. It’s to get ready as quickly as possible for September.”