All is calm once again regarding the Irish national team. Martin O'Neill has rejected the advances of Stoke City and will officially sign his contract as Irish manager ahead of the UEFA Nations League draw next Wednesday.
This was the key line from John Delaney's media briefing, in which he also confirmed the timeline of events over a weekend during which Stoke attempted to extricate O'Neill from Ireland. On Saturday evening, O'Neill phoned Delaney to inform him he was going to meet with Stoke City. Delaney acknowledged so, although did tell the press that "on balance, my view on Sunday was that he was going to ring me to say that he was going to stay with the Republic of Ireland".
Delaney's forecasting rang true. "He rang me on Sunday afternoon to say that he respectfully turned down the Stoke offer".
The CEO was forthright about the fact that O'Neill has received a number of job offers from England, all of which he informed Delaney of.
There seems to exist a strong level of trust between manager and CEO, with Delaney stressing so during his briefing: "There is a lot of trust, and I’ve said this many times, between the manager and the association. I always felt he would stay".
Trust, presumably, is how both parties have allowed O'Neill to be tethered to the Association by nothing but a verbal agreement for a cumulative 29 weeks between contracts. If your hope was that this next contract would set everything in stone, and remove the nebulous area of verbal arrangements, however, you're going to be disappointed.
When asked by Balls whether the next contract would contain a clause that would allow O'Neill break contract to join a Premier League club, Delaney said that "It’s not so much a clause as an understanding. There have been many approaches to Martin in his time since he has joined us as manager. We’ve always had a very honest and open relationship and he’ll inform us".
The FAI, it seems, will not stand in O'Neill's way were he to be tempted by a job in England.
If an employee wants to leave an employer, you can’t stop them. It’s like a footballer wanting to leave Liverpool for Barcelona, or whatever. Martin O’Neill, if he wanted to manage Stoke City or anyone else, could have done so by now.
But he doesn’t, he wants to be the manager of the Republic of Ireland.
So if a club comes in for O'Neill, the only question regarding his Irish future is whether he wants to take the job. The last few days have proved that O'Neill is relatively picky: even a club in the lower reaches of the Premier League that fails to offer satisfactory contract details is not enough to tempt O'Neill to Stoke.
Should he leave, the FAI will be entitled to compensation, although Delaney claimed that they would have been entitled to some even had O'Neill left over the weekend.
Martin O'Neill will have signed a new contract with the FAI within the next week, but should another Premier League club come calling in the future, there is no guarantee that the paper will keep him in Ireland.
See Also: John Delaney Confirms O'Neill Deal And Reveals The Cause Of Contract Delay
