Not long after the Donegal's All-Ireland victory in 2012, Jim McGuinness took up a role with Celtic as a performance consultant. His time at the Scottish club has led him to take a greater interest in the sport of his employers. He has already taken his first steps into soccer coaching by undertaking the FAI Coaching Pathway. Talking to journalists at the launch of Sky Sports' 2015 GAA coverage, the Donegal man was asked about the possibility of one day becoming a soccer manager.
McGuinness is someone who strives to constantly improve and he explained that earning his coaching badges will help him do exactly that.
What I want to do at the moment is use the badges to make myself better in my own job. I do a lot of one to ones with players every single day and you do get into very in-depth conversations with them in terms of where they're at themselves and where they want to go at the position they play in the team, so there's a lot of technical and tactical stuff there as well as just general conversation. I think it'll help me in my job and obviously I've been a coach and I like coaching so I suppose I'd like to challenge myself in that area to see what I can do and what I can offer and how much I would enjoy that dynamic.
I'm going into it with an open mind to be honest with you. I'm really enjoying it at the moment and learning everyday. The coaches at Celtic have been very good aswell, they've given me couple of hours here and there in terms of their defensive structures and what they like to do and the manager said aswell that he's going to give me a couple of sessions. So I'm looking forward to that and being around the kind of people that can educate you and develop you.
The ex-inter-county boss was unveiled on Monday as an analyst for Sky's GAA coverage. He revealed that the opportunity to "look at things and develop concepts" was one of the factors which encouraged him to take the job.
Picture credit: Rob Casey / SPORTSFILE
