John Fogarty has an excellent interview with Jim McGuinness in the Irish Examiner today where we learn about the debilitating self-doubt which haunted him as a young man.
Towards the end of the interview, McGuinness tells of a meeting with Roy Keane at Celtic Park as the Glasgow side took on Barcelona in the Champions League. The Donegal manager says that the now Aston Villa and Ireland assistant manager asked him the same question fives times in an attempt to discover his formula for success.
He said to me ‘why did you win the All-Ireland?’ Focus. ‘Why did you win the All-Ireland?’ Because we were very dedicated. ‘Why did you win the All-Ireland?’ Because we trained at a very high intensity level. ‘Why did you win the All-Ireland?’ We tried to be professional. ‘Why did you win the All-Ireland?’ We worked hard every day.
This was the conversation and every time he asked me the question, I thought about it and gave him the answer and he said ‘that’s it, good players, very focused training at a very high intensity level is the magic formula. That’s what you’ve just told me. That’s what we did at United. David Beckham used to say to me walking off the pitch after training that the match was a joke compared to that training’.
