Jim McGuinness

Jim McGuinness (born 16 November 1972) is a Gaelic football coach, and former player, who won the All-Ireland Senior Football Championship as a player with, and later manager of, the Donegal county team.

Since 2023, he has been manager, for the second time, of Donegal's senior team.

McGuinness was called up to the county minors in 1990.

In early 1992, he sufficiently impressed senior county manager Brian McEniff in a trial game in Ballyshannon to earn a call-up to the squad.

As a "scraggly-haired teen", McGuinness observed from the bench as McEniff's team defeated Derry in the final of the Ulster Senior Football Championship, before going on to win the All-Ireland Senior Football Championship.

McGuinness was also a star of Third-Level Colleges football, winning Sigerson Cups with Tralee in 1998 and 1999 as captain, and again as captain in 2001 with the University of Ulster at Jordanstown (UUJ).

At Tralee he studied health and leisure.

With Ireland, he played in the 1998 International Rules Series.

He also played for Donegal Boston.

After Donegal lost the final of the 1998 Ulster Senior Football Championship, Jim McGuinness — aged 25 at this time — decided to go to New York for the summer.

As he and his brother Mark drove towards the airport, a lorry struck their car and killed driver Mark — aged 27.

McGuinness later said: "Just as the lorry was passing us it came straight across the road and took us out of it. And that was it. We were flung, really, like a matchbox up the road and spun so many times, and the car came to a shudder and a stop. Very quickly you realised that we were in a very, very difficult situation. I just told him repeatedly that I loved him. That's what I told him. It was probably 10 years before I realised or accepted that it happened".

McGuinness scored a goal against Armagh ten minutes from the end of the 2002 Ulster Senior Football Championship final.

He started the first game of Brian McEniff's last spell as Donegal manager, a league defeat to Galway in Tuam in February 2003, during which he scored a point.

He made a substitute appearance for Paul McGonigle in the 2003 All-Ireland Senior Football Championship semi-final against Armagh.

He played with Donegal until 2003.

Upon retiring he became a fitness coach and lectured as a sports psychologist in the North West Regional College, Limavady.

At the age of 18 McGuinness was coaching underage teams.

Columba McDyer, at the time the only Donegal man with an All-Ireland SFC medal, approached him one night.

He said: "I think you are going to be a coach. I want you to have this whistle", and presented him with a blue and white whistle.

He played club football with Naomh Conaill, winning a Donegal Senior Football Championship in 2005.

Having guided Donegal to 2010 All-Ireland Under 21 Football Championship final, McGuinness was appointed manager of the senior county team later that year.

In his time at the helm, he oversaw a Donegal team that won three Ulster Senior Football Championship titles in four seasons and led his team to the 2012 All-Ireland Senior Football Championship title.

The 2012 final was the county's first appearance on football's ultimate stage since 1992, and only its second All-Ireland SFC title in more than 120 years of attempts.

He began working with the Scottish association football club Celtic as a coach in 2012, progressing to the position of assistant manager its under-20 squad.

In addition, McGuinness's Donegal was the only team to defeat Dublin in a championship match during Jim Gavin's time as manager, doing so in the 2014 All-Ireland semi-final, and McGuinness's condensing of the pitch influenced how Dublin subsequently improved over the next five years.

McGuinness ended his first spell as Donegal manager shortly after that defeat of Dublin.

McGuinness then became one of very few county team managers to have taken a role at a professional sports team outside Ireland.

In 2017, he took up a coaching role with Chinese Super League association football club Beijing Sinobo Guoan, until January 2018.

In December 2018, he was named as head coach of USL Championship association football club Charlotte Independence.

Over the course of his involvement in association football coaching, McGuinness has worked with figures such as the German Roger Schmidt (formerly Bayer Leverkusen manager) and the Spaniard Félix Sarriugarte (formerly Athletic Bilbao manager).

McGuinness's unexpected return as Donegal senior manager was announced in August 2023.

Having previously achieved his UEFA Pro Licence, he was the first person to be appointed as an inter-county Gaelic games manager while holding such a qualification.

McGuinness spent his childhood at Ard Patrick in Glenties.

His brother Charles died suddenly during the night from an unknown heart problem when he was 16.

McGuinness later spoke about that event: "It was a moment in your life, Ryan [Tubridy, host of The Late Late Show], where you're going along and your life is going along in a certain direction and then, just all of a sudden, you're jilted and you're going in a different direction. In many respects it was like a sledgehammer. I have to say that. I was 12, heading for 13, and you're never the same person again. And that's being honest. All of a sudden your life just changes. You're weak and you're vulnerable. There's this sense of freefall and trying to make sense of it. All I wanted to do was make things right for my mother and father, to get it back to what it was".

A friend of Charles suggested the dead boy would have been "a cert for the county minors".

McGuinness took the remark to heart and it proved an important motivation for his later life: "I remember them words and I remember staring at the television, and in that moment saying to myself: 'I'm going to do that. I'm going to do that'. And in that moment my focus became very, very concentrated and I became very aware of the fact that I didn't want anybody else in the room to realise what I was thinking. From that moment on, that's how I started living my life. When I would get in from school at twenty to four — we're just a couple of hundred metres from the school — at quarter to four I'd be running down the road or on the bike and I'd be in the pitch, particularly in the wintertime because you'd only have maybe 45 minutes of light. It just became a big, big part of my life".

Charles's namesake, a nephew of Jim, would later play for Donegal as well.

Jim McGuinness's boyhood hero was Jack O'Shea.