After taking over as the Gambia coach in May, FIFA sat down to chat all things management with globetrotting trailblazer Johnny McKinstry.
Former Sierra Leone, Rwanda and Uganda coach who is now in charge of the Gambia wants to take the ambitious African nation to a maiden World Cup.
For most 17-year-olds who have just passed their driving test, heading out to pick up a few friends, or taking their new-found sense of freedom to a drive-through restaurant, tends to top the agenda. For Johnny McKinstry, however, the first thing on his mind was to get to the local pitch and put on a coaching session for under-10s.
The Northern Irishman grew up watching his local side Lisburn Distillery “like a religious zealot”, which in turn sparked a fascination for the coaching side of football.
“Understanding what football actually was, as opposed to what you see on TV, was planted in those childhood and teenage years,” McKinstry said. “I was up in the stands for 40 games a season watching 11v11 football. When I was 16, I did my work experience with the Irish FA and thought, ‘I like this’. I started coaching a local U-9 team that had just been set up and got the bug for it.”
Coaching fever swept over McKinstry as he worked across development centres, summer camps, and spent time with the New York Red Bulls’ elite youth programme. He then made a life-changing decision to coach at Craig Bellamy’s Foundation in Sierra Leone, where he worked with the best talents that the West African nation had to offer. The hard work paid off, and gave him the edge to pursue his dream move into senior football.
“Sierra Leone was really the right time, right place – you need a little bit of luck in this career and in life,” he continued. “Sierra Leone’s coach resigned with three [2014] World Cup qualifiers left. The chance of qualifying was minimal, five per cent or something, so it became obvious they were going to cut costs in the short-term and appoint a domestic coach.
“People knew who I was in the country. I was the only UEFA A licence coach working in Sierra Leone at the time and everyone knew our academy and the players we were developing. If I’d been sitting in Belfast applying for that job, there’s no chance they would have given it to me.”
That move, at 27, made McKinstry – who was told by careers advisors at school that his dreams were unrealistic – the youngest international coach in world football at the time. His impact on the pitch matched his feats off it, too. The Leone Stars secured four points in those three games under his tutelage, which led to him staying on as coach for more than 14 months, overseeing a climb to a record-high 50th in the FIFA/Coca-Cola World Ranking.
If the Sierra Leone job might have looked like good fortune to some, McKinstry continued to defy the odds. He celebrated his 30th birthday as coach of Rwanda, enjoyed a spell in charge of Uganda with time in Lithuanian and Bangladeshi club football in between, before leading Kenyan giants Gor Mahia to successive league titles. Those achievements duly caught the eye of the Gambia FA, who appointed him in May of this year.
“Arriving in the Gambia, I was very pleased to see that, organisationally and logistically, the football federation is really on top of things,” he said. “I’ve been really pleased with the support. I’ve asked them for some budgetary extensions in terms of bringing in more tech, more sport science to the team, and the answer has been ‘yes’ each time.
“The Gambia has obviously had a really successful five years. They’ve been to back-to-back AFCONs, and the youth national team got to the quarter-finals of the U-20 World Cup last year. However, it was built on a more defensive mindset, a low block, counter-attacking team.
“I feel the federation, the general public, and also the players have a real desire to go out and play offensive, front-foot, attacking football, and defend higher up the pitch in a more pressing style. That’s ultimately why I got the job – that’s how my teams tend to play.”
The new style was clear for all to see in his opening FIFA World Cup 26™ qualifying games. The Scorpions had lost their first two matches, but smashed the Seychelles 5-1 in the new coach’s curtain-raiser. They then took the lead against Gabon but were edged out 3-2, which leaves the nation six points behind their counterparts in second place and the final potential route to the tournament.
Qualifying resumes next March, with the final six games played over a frantic seven-month period. But making it to the North American party isn’t the be-all and end-all for McKinstry.
“There’s a hell of a climb, there’s no doubt about that,” he said of the challenge to reach the tournament. “But there’s a lot of football still to be played and some of that football is quite a long way away. The possibility is there. If we go and have a really good Cup of Nations qualification campaign and we qualify again, we’ll come back into the World Cup series really enthusiastic and motivated.
“It’s a very young team. The average age in the last camp was 24, and we’re going to be introducing more young players. We gave four debuts out to the young guys graduating from the U-20s, so the average age is going to drop again over the coming windows. So, for 26, let’s see what’s possible and have a real go. I think 2030 is definitely our stretch goal. By 2030, all these young kids will now be in their mid-20s and really have a lot of experience behind them, so that’s probably the more realistic of the two [World Cups].”
McKinstry will now be able to reap the rewards of a promising up-and-coming generation of Gambian footballers, headlined by Yankuba Minteh. The 20-year-old forward, who netted in both of the Northern Irishman’s opening games, became the nation’s most expensive footballer in July when he moved to Brighton from Newcastle for £30m.
“At 19 [now 20], he has already done so much after a great breakthrough season with Feyenoord,” McKinstry said of Mineth. “Yankuba is a really down-to-earth kid and is reasonably quiet, but his work ethic is really good. He listens, he wants to get better and he’s a real winner. It’s only three years ago he was playing in the amateur Gambian league. He has done so much in the last few years and his ability to cope with that shows a real focus and level headedness.
“My career to date has always shown that the door is open for the young players to come through if they’re ready for it. But we also have to be careful, because if you throw someone in too early, it can be damaging to the process of taking them to the very top level. It’s exciting for me that the talent is there, but it’s challenging as well.”
Fifa.com
