Nations League: Is Michael O’Neill’s next Northern Ireland team already here?

In his first spell as manager, O’Neill worked with five of Northern Ireland’s seven most capped players of all time.

When asked the key to ensuring a promising international career turns into a long one, he returned to one of his recurring themes – at what level and how regularly his squad are playing their club football.

“As I’ve said many times, it’s not like they’ve 100 league games under their belts or anything like that. They’ve had to learn without the benefit of going back and playing for their clubs at times as well.

“The influence we can have on it is giving them exposure at international level which hopefully helps the club situation when they go back, the way the manager looks at them or maybe brings them to the attention of other clubs as well.”

With O’Neill looking to become just the second manager to lead Northern Ireland to a second major tournament, he sees a “developing side”, one already “very good without the ball” and showing a desire “to improve together” ahead of qualification campaigns for the 2026 World Cup and Euro 2028.

With Liverpool’s Bradley thrillingly leading the way, there have been times over the past year when it appears the future is already here. At others, most especially when averaging just a goal a game across their past seven games, the side have looked at the correct level in the third tier of the Nations League.

While the manager describes himself as “optimistic” for the future, naturally it cannot be predicted exactly how the international careers of these talented individuals will progress, or if a much needed goalscorer will emerge to play alongside them.

“I think there’s a lot of players that will be in this group for a long period of time.

“Where their careers go, will they have careers like Steven Davis has had? Like Jonny Evans has had? Or Aaron Hughes has had? Who knows?

“Certainly they’ve got the potential to have long and established international careers and hopefully successful ones as well.”