Johnny McKinstry is still finding his bearings in Kaunas. The young Northern Irishman moved to Lithuania a few weeks ago to take over Kauno Zalgiris, a club that is famous in Europe for its basketball team.
Lithuania have lost the last two European Basketball Championship finals, in 2013 and 2015, and are hoping to go one better when this year’s EuroBasket begins this week, so McKinstry knows enticing the locals from basketball to football will be a considerable challenge.
But McKinstry is no stranger to defying expectations and overcoming odds. He was appointed the coach of the Sierra Leone national team at the age of 27, which made him the youngest international coach in the world. He was still in his twenties when he accepted his second the job of Rwanda, so he is already something of a veteran manager even though he just celebrated his 32nd birthday last month.
My club here is actually a well renowned basketball club with different sections to it,” says McKinstry. “It works a bit like Barcelona, except obviously there the basketball club plays second fiddle to football. Our club logo has a basketball, which gives you a good indication of how popular basketball is in this country. But equally, it’s an incredible opportunity and a challenge. This is an organisation used to getting results at the highest level and we need to work and build the football club up from the bottom which is obviously something that appeals to me.”
McKinstry understands the concept of building up a football organisation from the ground floor better than most managers. A young man who came from Lisburn in Northern Ireland with no experience as a professional player, he decided as a teenager that coaching would offer him the best opportunity to work at the highest level of the game. He made his name coaching youth sides at New York Red Bulls and, after working at Craig Bellamy’s foundation in Sierra Leone, he eventually found his niche in Africa.
“In Africa, I started coaching youth football in Ghana and then moved to Sierra Leone. Sierra Leone is a place filled with colour and chaos. At the start of my time there, I remember being completely overwhelmed. It was like living in a nightclub but in the end I considered it home. Even when I started coaching the national team, I kept coaching young academy players. Sierra Leone has fantastic culture and people. When I had to eventually leave, I did so with a very heavy heart.”
McKinstry achieved impressive things in Sierra Leone. He took the country to 50th in the Fifa rankings – the highest ranking in their history – but, after defeats by the Ivory Coast and DR Congo in the Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers, he was sacked via email. The young manager was managing elite players, including midfielder Rodney Strasser, who was playing for AC Milan at the time, and earned their respect with his detailed preparation. While McKinstry found that managing the players was fruitful, he found difficulties dealing with some stakeholders of the game in Sierra Leone.
“A big thing you have to learn about African football is how to manage expectations,” he says. “There is no limit to what they believe you can achieve. To give you an example, I had a minister in Sierra Leone asking me why I couldn’t get the national team to play more like Barcelona. Unfortunately Lionel Messi didn’t grow up in Freetown. You just have to understand this is the culture and work with it.”
McKinstry packed up his belongings and flew to Rwanda to manage the national team. The Rwandan capital of Kigali proved a slight culture shock to McKinstry who had got used to the hustle and bustle of Freetown. “I think Rwanda reflects east Africa in a way, it’s a lot more relaxed than west Africa. Kigali is a really nice city, and it’s extremely well developed. Obviously there’s perceptions about Rwanda, but don’t forget I come from Northern Ireland, and understand how easy people label a place without actually experiencing it.”
When McKinstry arrived to coach Rwanda, only three players in his national team were plying their trade outside the country. By the time he left, 13 players were making a living from football abroad. In January 2016, McKinstry took Rwanda to the knock out stages of the African Nations Championship after topping their group in a tournament hosted in the country. The land-locked nation had never experienced results like this, and again McKinstry was forced to manage expectations.
“We were playing DR Congo, who eventually won the tournament in the quarter-finals. They’re an excellent team and that was a huge challenge in itself, but we had people who genuinely believed we absolutely going to win the tournament at home in Kigali. You obviously have full belief in your players but you’re also trying to keep a lid on things.”
Rwanda lost against DR Congo after extra-time and once again McKinstry was disappointed to have lost his job shortly afterwards. He is young but experienced in the brutal and bruising nature of football. In his own dealings with players as a manager, he has tried to bring in a new philosophy.
“If you listen to some managers, it can make you cringe. Players can be treated like commodities and sometimes the players themselves get forgotten about. I try to treat people as people in football and then you find that you get twice as much back. I get frustrated when people talk about players as commodities, we have a duty to try and help them as people and players.”
McKinstry is adjusting to his new life in Kaunas and is grateful that his commute to see his girlfriend in London is a bit easier than it was when he lived in Kigali or Freetown. Whether coaching youth teams in New York, international teams in Africa or at a club in Europe, his frustrations are universal to dugouts across the world. “I remember talking to a Scottish manager and he said to me from Monday to Friday as a manager you’re in complete control – almost like an army major – but on that Saturday you release control. You have to trust the work you have done with the players is sufficient and sit there for 90 minutes with no control. That never gets easier for me.”
Credit: The Guardian.com