Baraclough has ‘no bitterness’ over NI sacking

Northern Ireland vs. Slovakia: World Cup qualifying

Date: Friday, October 10th, 2019 at 19:45 BST

“Football will eat you up inside if you have bitterness and resentment inside.”

The Northern Ireland men’s team has won a sizable tournament thanks to the help of just three managers.

The country’s legends include current boss Michael O’Neill, Billy Bingham, and Peter Doherty, who helped the team win the World Cup or the European Championships.

That trio would be a quartet, though the post’s width would be a quartet.

When Northern Ireland defeated Slovakia in a Euro 2020 play-off at Windsor Park, Ian Baraclough was in only his sixth game as manager.

After winning the penalty shootout victory over Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kyle Lafferty scored a late goal from distance in the 90th minute to make it a late game.

Instead, the striker, who was only playing a week after his sister passed away, saw his effort slam dragged tamely to safety before hitting the outside of the upright.

Slovakia, who will be in Belfast on Friday night for a 2026 World Cup qualifier, advanced to Euro 2020 with Michal Duris’ wacky goal 10 minutes after the end of the second period of extra time.

What can change outcomes and careers is a post’s width, doesn’t it? Says Baraclough.

“Moments in that game, you know,” I keep saying. For Johnny Evans’ winner, it also fell off Johnny Evans’ backside.

Only Covid-19’s delays to the international football calendar allowed Baraclough to take charge of the play-off. Initial plans included completing the qualifying campaign before concentrating solely on his new job at Stoke City.

The former Queen’s Park Rangers defender acknowledges that, despite things going the other way, Slovakia could still still be “could have been viewed as O’Neill’s side.”

Only after missing out on what would have been the country’s second consecutive European Championships did Baraclough’s remit to “make a younger, more dynamic team over a period of time” come into prominence.

The former Motherwell manager took over as manager of Northern Ireland’s under-21 team, whose notable victory over Spain was the highlight of his tenure. Dan Ballard, a player who made his international debut in Baraclough’s first senior match, a 1-1 draw away to Romania in September 2020, made that night’s lineup.

Conor Bradley, Trai Hume, Shea Charles, Ali McCann, and Brodie Spencer would receive senior bows from the Englishman before he lost his job 25 months later.

After seeing the recent highs, Baraclough thought the blooding of young people was due to “the understanding that results would drop for a certain period while those players were given experience,” but perhaps the contrast was too stark.

He claims that taking some risk in order to give them game time before they even started playing club football was.

While you’re playing for these senior international teams, where you’re all first team players, week in, week out, you’d probably get away with making mistakes in under-21s.

In the end, Baraclough would lose his job with a record of six victories and eight draws from 28 games in place of Michael O’Neill, the same person he had succeeded to the role. The new contract would continue until Euro 2024.

Although there were times when we were applauding the fans and we could see that they were frustrated because the results weren’t being achieved, I knew from the beginning that this project would be much longer than a campaign’s duration, according to Baraclough.

“I’d signed a new contract that would extend my participation in the previous Euros campaign, but things change, such as when Michael leaves Stoke, and decisions are made without your control,” he said.

I was very disappointed that I didn’t win the World Cup and the Euros because, in the end, that was what you were going to be judged against, and we ended up being judged on a Nations League campaign where we were completely filling the squad with these young players. Although that disappointed me, I can’t say that I’m bitter anymore.

As a result, Baraclough has enjoyed watching a number of his former players develop into experienced internationals from afar.

There was no way that the fans would just accept that you would go away to countries like Greece and turn them over, he adds. “Maybe the fans thought the previous campaign should have produced more than what it did.

Because players will now have 100, 150 first-team games under their belts, 20 to 25 senior caps or more under their belts, and they are just starting to feel comfortable at this level, we looked into the distance and realized realistically this was the best time for this group to really start making an impact.

It has now come to fruition. It’s amazing to see those players succeed at a senior level and still do so well.

Since April, Baraclough has been Partick Thistle’s sporting director in the Scottish Championship, making efforts to create a “younger, more dynamic” squad, which he claims reminds him of his work with Northern Ireland.

The team is currently second in the table, six points clear of St Johnstone, but they still have a game in hand. The League Cup’s run ended when Celtic reached the Firhill Stadium in the quarter-finals last month, which also generated a lot of excitement.

After former Celtic defender Mark Wilson was appointed as the club’s permanent manager in May 2025, Baraclough experienced a freak accident while on a honeymoon that made him worried he might never walk again.

The 54-year-old was hit into the sand by a wave while on a honeymoon in Mauritius, leaving him with spinal cord damage and fractured vertebrae in his back.

I was just thinking about going away and getting married, spending 10 nice days in Mauritius, and then returning for pre-season, but as we all know, things can change very quickly, he says.

I ended up spending a month in a hospital in Mauritius. I’m back full-time right now, thankfully walking, and able to accomplish most of my goals.