Sunderland defender Trai Hume has emerged as one of the breakout defenders in the Championship this season and the young right-back could play a key role in the second chapter of Michael O'Neill's tenure as Northern Ireland manager.
O'Neill will begin his second spell in charge of the Green and White Army away to San Marino on Thursday evening and he has set himself a huge act to follow after his first spell in the dugout at Windsor Park.
During O'Neill's nine years in charge, Northern Ireland qualified for their first ever European Championships - reaching the last 16 at EURO 2016 - as well as reaching the play-offs for both the 2018 World Cup and EURO 2020, in what is regarded as one of the most successful periods in the country's football history.
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But after he left to take over as manager of Stoke City in 2020, Northern Ireland's results have dipped dramatically. They finished seven points adrift of the play-off places during the 2022 World Cup qualifiers, and won just one game in a UEFA Nations League group that contained Greece, Kosovo and Cyprus, narrowly avoiding relegation from League C on goal difference.
That form led to O'Neill's replacement, Ian Baraclough, losing his job and after his ill-fated spell at Stoke City, O'Neill is back in Belfast looking for managerial redemption.
His core group of players from his first tenure - the likes of Jonny Evans, Steven Davis, Craig Cathcart, Corry Evans and Josh Magennis - all remain but are aging.
But during his first spell in charge, O’Neill and then-technical director Jim Magilton started a national academy called Club NI and a number of its inductees, including Sunderland star Hume, are now making up the rest of the squad and it's these youngsters that fill O'Neill with hope heading into the EURO 2024 qualifiers.
“It’s a different squad to what I had before,” O’Neill told the Athletic. “But it still has a lot of the mainstays. It’s what is around it that excites me - I didn’t have numbers of players coming through in those years.
"Now we’ve Shea Charles, Isaac Price, Dale Taylor, Conor Bradley, Trai Hume. They could all play in the under-21s. With Jim Magilton, we did a huge amount of work setting up Club NI. There’s Ethan Galbraith (a Manchester United youngster out on loan at Salford City in League Two) as well.”
Northern Ireland's poor form meant they were placed in pot five for the qualification draw but having been drawn in a group alongside Denmark, Finland, Slovenia, Kazakhstan and San Marino, O'Neill feels qualifying as one of the two automatic qualifiers from their group is by no means out of the question.
“When this group came out, it did remind me of the 2016 qualification group," he added. "We were a pot five team then, we’re a pot five team now. We see an opportunity; so do Denmark, Finland, Kazakhstan and Slovenia.
“But it’s not like when you’re in with Germany and Holland. I believe we can qualify, but we need a lot of things in our favour - an excellent home record being one.
"We’re probably going to need in the region of 18 to 21 points overall and there are 15 available at home. We need to take as many there as we can. We’ll need availability of players, which we’re stretched with already. So we’ll need young players to step up."
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