Baraclough has 'no bitterness' over NI sacking

World Cup qualifying: Northern Ireland v Slovakia

Venue: Windsor Park, Belfast Date: Friday, 10 October Time: 19:45 BST

Coverage: Watch on BBC One NI and BBC iPlayer , listen on BBC Radio Ulster and BBC Sounds, follow live text coverage on the BBC Sport website & app

"If you've got bitterness and resentment in football, then it'll eat you up inside."

Just three managers have taken the Northern Ireland men's team to a major tournament.

Peter Doherty, Billy Bingham and current boss Michael O'Neill are all lauded as legends in the country for guiding the side to either the World Cup or European Championships.

But for the width of the post, that trio would be a quartet.

Ian Baraclough was in only his sixth game in charge of Northern Ireland when he led the side into a Euro 2020 play-off against Slovakia at Windsor Park.

After advancing to the game thanks to a penalty shootout victory away to Bosnia-Herzegovina, further late heroics looked in store when Kyle Lafferty fired goalward from distance in the 90th minute.

The striker, who was playing just a week after the passing of his sister, instead saw his effort hit the outside of the upright and bounce tamely to safety.

Slovakia, who return to Belfast on Friday night for a 2026 World Cup qualifier, went on to secure their place at Euro 2020 through Michal Duris' scruffy goal 10 minutes from the end of the second period of extra time.

"The width of a post is what can change outcomes and what can change careers, isn't it?" Baraclough says.

"Moments in that game stick with me, you know? It came off Johnny Evans' backside for their winner, as well.

"You look back at that game and I feel as though we should have won. What could have been? But there you go."

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'We were in transition so we had to run with that'

It was only delays to the international football calendar caused by Covid-19 that ensured Baraclough was in charge of the play-off. Michael O'Neill had originally intended to finish the qualifying campaign before focusing solely on his new job at Stoke City.

The former Queen's Park Rangers defender acknowledges that had things turned out differently against Slovakia it would still "potentially" have been viewed as O'Neill's side.

It was only in the aftermath of missing out on what would have been a second consecutive European Championships for the country that Baraclough's remit to mould a "younger, more dynamic team over a period of time" came to the fore.

The former Motherwell manager took up the reins from his position with Northern Ireland's under-21 side where the highlight of his tenure was a noteworthy win away to Spain. One player who featured that night, Dan Ballard, was given an international debut in Baraclough's first game in charge of the senior side, a 1-1 draw away to Romania in September 2020.

Before the Englishman lost his job 25 months later, he would give senior bows to 12 more players including Conor Bradley, Trai Hume, Shea Charles, Ali McCann and Brodie Spencer.

Baraclough felt the blooding of youngsters was with "the understanding that results would drop for a certain period whilst those players were given experience" but, after such recent highs, perhaps the contrast proved too stark.

"To actually give them game time before they were even playing club football was a bit of a risk," he says.

"You would make mistakes in under-21s and you'd perhaps get away with it, whereas you're going into these senior international teams and they're all playing first team week in, week out.

"We came up against Kosovo [in a September 2022 Nations League win] and I looked at their squad compared to ours and I thought, 'geez, they're playing at a much higher level', but we were in transition, so we had to run with that."

'At the time I found it very, very disappointing'

Ultimately, despite the backing of a new contract that was to run until Euro 2024, Baraclough would lose his job after a record of six wins and eight draws from 28 games and was replaced by the same man he had succeeded in the role, Michael O'Neill.

"There were times we were going over and applauding the fans and you could see that they were frustrated because we weren't getting the results, but I knew deep inside that this was a project that was going to last much longer than the period of a campaign," Baraclough says.

"I'd signed a new contract that would take me up to the last Euros campaign, but things happen, Michael becomes available from Stoke, for instance, and decisions will be made that are out of your hands.

"At the time, I found it very, very disappointing that I didn't get a World Cup and a Euros because that was what, ultimately, you were going to be judged on and I ended up being judged on a Nations League campaign where we were absolutely flooding the squad with these young players. That was the disappointment for me, but, look, there's no bitterness."

As such, Baraclough has enjoyed watching from afar as a number of his former players become seasoned internationals.

"Maybe the fans thought that the previous campaign should have yielded more than what it did, but there was no way it was going to just materialise that you go away to the likes of Greece and turn them over," he adds.

"This World Cup campaign was somewhere where we looked into the distance and thought realistically this is the best time for this group to really start making an impact because players will now have 100, 150 first-team games under their belts, they'll have 20 to 25 senior caps or beyond under their belts, and now they're just starting to feel comfortable at this level.

"It's now come to fruition. To see those players come through and be doing so well at a senior level, it's fantastic.

"It's not one person per se that can lay claim to somebody's success but, just for me, I love looking back and saying I really enjoyed my time working with them and hopefully I helped in some way in developing them as people and as players."

'I was pleased that the club stood by me'

Since April, Baraclough has been sporting director of Partick Thistle in the Scottish Championship, with the efforts to build a "younger, more dynamic" squad something he says reminds him of his work with Northern Ireland.

The side are currently second in the table, six points behind leaders St Johnstone but with a game in hand. A League Cup run only ended when Celtic came to the Firhill Stadium in the quarter-finals last month brought plenty of excitement too.

It was after laying the foundations for the campaign last summer - former Celtic defender Mark Wilson was installed as the club's permanent manager in May 2025 - that Baraclough suffered an accident on honeymoon that left him fearful he may never walk again.

On honeymoon in Mauritius, the 54-year-old was slammed into the sand by a wave with the accident leaving him with fractured vertebrae in his back and a damaged spinal cord.

"Going away, having put the new head coach in place, I was just thinking I'd go off and get married, have 10 nice days in Mauritius and then come back ready for pre-season but, as we know, things can change very quickly," he says.

"I ended up being in hospital in Mauritius for a month. I'm back full-time now, I'm, thankfully walking and able to do most things that I've wanted to.

"I was pleased that the club stood by me in those early times and waited for me to recover. It has certainly put things into perspective anyway."