Johnathan McKinstry’s guidance counsellor at school told him it was unrealistic to think he could become a football manager. “I was told that I should focus on becoming a PE teacher but that is not what I wanted to be,” he tells Sky Sports. “I had to go abroad.”
By 27, the boy from Belfast had become the youngest international manager in the world with Sierra Leone. Now 39, he is onto his fourth international job, hoping for the results he needs to secure The Gambia their place at the Africa Cup of Nations.
The final round of qualifiers are upon them, concluding with a potentially decisive game against Tunisia. But before that they face Comoros in Morocco. “That is the big one. We need to win.” The frustration is that the game will not be in their new stadium.
The Confederation of African Football deemed the pitch in Banjul not to be of the required standard. “It is just not the same playing in neutral venues. Having 20,000 people pushing you on is different. It is why the Gallowgate End is so important to Newcastle United.”
With that, he gives away his allegiances, a boyhood fan of Kevin Keegan’s entertainers. It has been quite the journey since then. McKinstry is speaking to Sky Sports from his home near Cartagena in Spain. His wife is from Mexico. It all began for him in Ghana.
“I first came to Africa when I was 19 and still at university. I spent a summer with the Right to Dream Academy in Ghana. They have expanded exponentially since then. When I was there, they were in a rural village in the mountains with just one football pitch.”
It set him on a path to Sierra Leone, to Rwanda, to Uganda. But the game has taken him beyond Africa too, roles in the United States, Lithuania and Bangladesh. “It is where the opportunities have arisen. I have always been drawn in by the football,” he explains.
“When you step off an aeroplane into a new country, you are always nervous. I had never been to Bangladesh before in my life. The opportunity presented itself five days earlier. I had never considered it before that. But being uncomfortable is okay.”
It is a cliché to claim that the language of football is universal and McKinstry is respectful of cultural differences with Africa and, indeed, within Africa. But he argues some differences are overblown and regards certain skills as being transferable.
Ultimately, it is about communication. “And not just communicating with someone in Belfast. Can I connect with someone from Bangladesh? Can I connect with someone from Kenya? It is about understanding, being willing to listen, having empathy.”
They are qualities that he picked up quickly, doing summer camps in Ireland and England, coaching five year olds on a Sunday morning, making mistakes far away from the spotlight at an age when few even consider coaching – and learning from all of that.
“It taught me so much. I still remember a session in Newcastle. It was a disability football session and I came away from it feeling that the kids had not had the best time because I did not communicate properly and organise the session well enough.
“It was one of my early sessions coaching players with different challenges. I came away frustrated that I had not created the best environment for that hour. I decided there and then that I needed to do better. I needed to listen. Fantastic lessons.”
Inspiring too. “Coaching a young player who has a challenge walking, moving or seeing but they are so determined. It makes you think anything is possible.” It was a similar feeling when he first went to work in Ghana in 2006, beginning his love affair with Africa.
“These young players were working harder than anyone I had ever seen. They knew it were their chance. It was bigger than football. They wanted to take this opportunity for their family, for their community. That stayed in my brain. It drew me back.”
The Gambia job is a particularly appealing one because of the vast untapped potential. “We are lowly ranked purely because historically we have been lowly ranked. If you look at the value of the squad, where the players are playing their football, it is a high level.”
McKinstry had won the league title in Kenya but was lured in because these were elite players. The standout name is Yankuba Minteh, now lighting up the Premier League with Brighton, but there are others. Ebou Adams is at Derby. Adama Bojang at Reims.
This next generation, one that reached the knockout stages of the U20 World Cup, could be special. “We have a really exciting group of players, lads not even on the radar yet, so we are eager to keep that momentum up and give these players a platform,” he says.
“I happened to run into Michael O’Neill, the Northern Ireland manager, and I told him we had got about 160 professionals playing in Europe, 50 in top-tier divisions, getting 90 minutes most weeks. The look on his face told me would give his right hand for that.”
McKinstry job is to introduce a style of football more in-keeping with the quality of player now being produced. “They want to go toe-to-toe as they put it. It is a big change for the team to how they were playing previously with a low-block and counter-attacking.”
His ideas are very different, ideas that began to percolate when he took a job coaching in New York Red Bulls’ academy. “Even now, my teams are very intense, playing high energy, reasonably vertical football and you need to be fit to play it,” adds McKinstry.
“I still do not know if they hired me because my ideas aligned or my ideas align because I spent three years in New York and the philosophy is imprinted into my footballing DNA. It is probably a bit of both because it was an important part of my development.”
A lot has been learned in the years since. “There is an old saying, if you are the smartest guy in the room, you are in the wrong room.” One key lesson is that he makes sure to bounce ideas off former players, humble enough to know what he does not know.
“I have got very clear ideas but I also know what I lack. I have never been a footballer playing in front of 60,000 people. I do not know what it is like to take a penalty in that environment. I use my coaching staff to gather that experience around me.”
He hopes that it will make the difference in these two games but he knows that the margins are fine. “The group is remarkably tight. All the games, it has been a single goal with quite a few very late goals. It is remarkably close.” What is next is anyone’s guess.
“Football has been kind to me and the chance probably came early than I thought at 27. I am less focused on the future than I was 15 years ago. Football is like a river, it is a meandering career, it is not a straight line. But I know I am going in the right direction.”
