Michael McArdle believes his Northern Ireland side are ready to make history, with Portugal standing in their way on Friday at Inver Park in the first leg of their first-round World Cup play-off. Taking over in March, the manager says he has spent his time in charge deliberately preparing his players for exactly this kind of examination.
His own route to the job was anything but conventional. For seven and a half years McArdle worked in the construction industry while playing semi-professional football, studying for a degree in building services engineering and raising three young children with his wife, Tammy. Any leftover earnings went into funding his coaching badges, until he took what he describes as “probably a 300% drop in salary” to commit to coaching full-time.
That gamble followed foundations laid at Falkirk, St Mirren and Ayr United, a spell coaching Scotland Women’s Under-23 side and a role with the Scottish FA as head of elite women’s football. It was that CV, and the impression he made on Irish FA figures, that led to his appointment by Northern Ireland in March. His reign began with back-to-back victories against Malta in April, a sequence that helped secure the team’s place in the 2027 World Cup play-offs.
The 46-year-old and his wife were both born and raised in Moodiesburn, a village in North Lanarkshire near Glasgow, and have never left it. “My wife is now a social carer in the village, looking after the old buddies that raised us – we’ve always been from families that give for others and I think coaching aligns with that easily, because ultimately that’s what coaching is,” McArdle said. “I’m a servant leader. I’m very comfortable that way, as an experienced coach, being vulnerable and open. That servant leadership style, I wanted to make sure that the players are aware of that right away.”
Now a Uefa Pro licence holder, McArdle was influenced by videos of the former Milan and Italy coach Arrigo Sacchi running drills around a 4-4-2. With Northern Ireland, though, he favours flexibility, which is why his team used a variety of tactics across his first four games in charge: the April wins over Malta and narrow 2-1 defeats by Switzerland and Turkey in June. “I deliberately didn’t go with one strict formation or style,” he said. “For a nation such as ourselves, from a population perspective, we’re the 150th nation in the world and we’re sitting 50th [in the Fifa women’s world rankings] because we do punch above our weight for passion for the sport. We could easily just sit behind the ball and try to get through and finish with the most points in League B and then just go to the play-offs and sit behind the ball again and just try and stay in the game. For me, though, and for us as a nation, we’re trying to go: ‘Let’s take a step beyond this, let’s sustainably now move towards competing on a regular basis at a higher level.'”
He added: “To take that step, sometimes you need to take a step backwards and take a few hits as well. I wanted us to be exposed and embrace [being uncomfortable]. I kept referencing ‘play-off ready’, because ‘play-off ready’ is where we’ll be tested at the highest level. We learned so much about ourselves. The game of football is a living organism – you can’t predict what happens. We need to be ready for everything as a small nation. If we stick to one strict style of play, we won’t be adaptable when it comes to those moments.”
The former goalkeeper is also keen to develop Northern Ireland’s younger players, having done so in Scotland, and says he had chances to leave the Scottish game earlier that never felt right in terms of timing. Conversations with senior Irish FA figures – Angela Platt, the director of women’s football, the technical director Aaron Hughes and the now former president Conrad Kirkwood – convinced him that “at every meeting everything was just so aligned with my passion and my skill set”. He also felt a bond between Glasgow and Belfast that “just felt like family”.
Northern Ireland reached Euro 2022 but have never played at a Women’s World Cup, and McArdle is under no illusions about the scale of what lies ahead. Even if they overcome Portugal – a huge task in itself – either Croatia or Iceland would await in the second round of the play-offs in December. Progress there could still leave them the lowest-ranked of the eight European play-off winners, and because only the seven highest-ranked of those eight are guaranteed places in Brazil, it would require a further round at the inter-confederation play-offs in February. That potential three-stage path is something akin to a “movie script”, he says, before adding: “There are six probably history-making results to go and get. Going toe-to-toe with Portugal is a great opportunity for us to test ourselves. When I first came into the post, I was very bullish to say ‘six points against Malta was a necessity’ and we had to put ourselves under that pressure – now the opportunity to do something special, that’s the piece we’re all excited about.”