Coach Kicks: Kenny Shiels (Northern Ireland)

The magazine’s regular coaches’ questionnaire, taken by the manager who had just made Northern Ireland history. His favourite sessions, he says, are designed around what the team needs rather than what he enjoys, and he declines to single out one player who impressed him most – unfortunately for the girls, as he puts it. His car, house and office are indeed full of footballs, bibs and cones, and he wonders aloud what anyone who thinks his footballs are his does about theirs. Asked which player from anywhere he would take, he wants English, Scottish and Welsh players and Republic of Ireland ones too. His advice to a new coach is to work hard, have your own philosophy and stick to it, and he names the American songwriter John Prine as the artist he turns to.