At twenty-nine years old, Rwanda national team manager Johnny McKinstry is one of the youngest and most motivated international managers in world football today.
Despite his young age, the Northern Irishman holds a wealth of experience at various levels of coaching including two national team appointments with Sierra Leone and Rwanda, whom he has been in charge of since March. Experience in football management on three different continents has provided McKinstry with an appreciation for the demands that come with holding football-related roles in some of the most diverse and socio-political tumultuous regions on Earth, cultivating the utmost confidence that McKinstry has in his coaching abilities.
Born and raised in Lisburn, Northern Ireland, McKinstry’s youth was spent in complete infatuation with local Irish League side Lisburn Distillery, as he became one of the club’s biggest supporters during his adolescence.
“From the age of eight or nine I would go watch Distillery play every weekend. It’s fair to say that from about eight to when I was eighteen, I honestly don’t think I missed a game,” McKinstry said. “Really, you’re talking 10 years of about 40 games a season and in total around 400 games that I saw.”
In addition to the large volume of games that McKinstry attended, he also cites the fan interaction aspect of the Irish League as something that fostered his love of football.
“With the Irish League being a bit lower key you were able to know all of the players and when the club won a cup or the league, the club supporters were part of the celebrations,” McKinstry said. “I’ve got photographs from when I was a teenager of me with the League Cup or the First Division trophy and it was great to have that personal affinity with something. It definitely had a big impact in terms of my closeness to the game.”
Aware of his insufficient skill level as a footballer in his teen years, McKinstry delved into coaching at about sixteen years of age with local youth sides: insufficient in-as-so much as the dream of playing professionally remained a fantasy, and not a reality.
“I knew I wasn’t at the same skill level as other players who were getting trials to go abroad and try out for teams in England,” McKinstry said. “So I started doing a little bit of coaching with the local under-10 team and I enjoyed it.”
McKinstry developed his passion for coaching at Northumbria University in Newcastle, where he graduated with a degree in applied sports science with coaching.
“While at Northumbria I did some coaching with the university team, which was basically an under-23 squad,” McKinstry said. “It provided a good experience for me and helped me discover and implement my views on the game from a coaching sense.”
While at Northumbria, McKinstry was named the U.K. Grassroots Coach of the Year by Manchester United in 2006, allowing him the chance to visit Ghana as part of a spell with the Right to Dream Academy, a high-level football academy serving Ghanaian youth.
“Going to Ghana and working with the players there provided a real contrast to the styles of coaching found in the United Kingdom and the United States,” McKinstry said. “The players in the U.K. and U.S. constantly need the coaches to change drills up and introduce new ones in order to prevent boredom from setting in, while those in Ghana were determined to get a drill or skill right, whether it took one minute or one hour to do so.”
After returning from Ghana and graduating from Northumbria, McKinstry had the opportunity to implement these coaching techniques as a part of the New York Red Bulls Academy (serving the MLS club of the same name).
“Working at the Red Bulls Academy, I had the chance to coach and develop some of the top players from the Tri-State Area,” McKinstry said. “My time in New York was great and I still have many friends in that area and consider it a home for me.”
McKinstry, always eager for a new challenge, decided to return to Africa in 2010 to work for the Craig Bellamy Foundation in Sierra Leone, where he would later rise to the position of national team boss.
“It was quite the culture shock going from New York City to Sierra Leone. New York is New York obviously, and the facilities in Sierra Leone were different,” McKinstry said. “But the coaching aspect of it remained largely the same, working with young players and trying to grow their skill.”
After three years of work with the foundation, McKinstry decided to throw his hat into the ring with regard to the national team post after the resignation of then Sierra Leone manager Lars-Olof Mattsson in 2013.
“It’s funny, because when I accepted the job at the foundation in 2010, it was joked about that I would get the national team job before too long, but when the opportunity presented itself, I was confident that I was ready for the task. I made a presentation highlighting what I felt we needed to change to make Sierra Leone a better football team and felt afterwards that I had a good chance of getting the job.”
Appointed caretaker manager in April of 2013 before getting the job on a permanent basis, McKinstry guided Sierra Leone to new heights by raising the team to 50th in the FIFA Rankings in August 2014.
“I thrive on pressure, so even as the caretaker manager those first few games weren’t overwhelming for me. The unique pressures of each match day, walking out to a packed stadium and the different emotions you go through during a game, all of that suits me very well”
“While with Sierra Leone, we had some very accomplished players like Kei Kamara that gave us the skill necessary to be good. In fact, a lot of our squad came in from overseas clubs.”
Despite the advantages that having a talented squad provided McKinstry, the limited time he had to work with them prior to matches posed an obvious problem.
“The biggest thing while coaching Sierra Leone was the need to get a group of players and have them come together in training in the space of about four or five days,” McKinstry said. “Having them come in from all parts of the world, my coaching had to make sure they were ready for the qualifiers with only a few days time.”
However, the biggest challenge for McKinstry and the nation of Sierra Leone would come in 2014 as the country experienced an Ebola epidemic of incredible proportions: a deadly situation for all its inhabitants.
“In 2014, with the Ebola situation, it was a scary thing to have happen and a real shame for the country. Beyond the loss of life that occurred, the country had just begun experiencing tourism on a large-scale, and all of that came to a halt.” McKinstry sadly remarked that “It will be years until they can fully recover from the effects of it, which is incredibly unfortunate.”
Concerning football, the Ebola outbreak was equally disastrous, with the rescheduling of fixtures derailing Sierra Leone’s 2015 African Cup of Nations (AFCON) qualifying campaign.
“Because of the Ebola outbreak, it was determined that we could not host any home qualifiers during that time. But, for some reason, the African federations decided that instead of having us host our home matches at a neutral venue, we would go play a second away fixture at the home stadium of our opponents, giving up any kind of advantage,” McKinstry said. “There’s no doubt in my mind that if we had not been forced to play two away matches, we would have qualified for the 2015 AFCON.”
Despite the circumstances that surrounded their 2015 AFCON qualification plight, Sierra Leone sacked McKinstry in September of 2014, after he compiled a 3-3-2 (W-L-D) record with the national side.
“It was disappointing, of course, when learning that I was no longer in charge,” McKinstry said. “But I left feeling proud in the sense that I knew I had gotten the best from all my players during my time.”
Now the national team manager of Rwanda for three months, McKinstry faces a new set of challenges from those he encountered while managing Sierra Leone.
“The biggest difference from Sierra Leone to now with Rwanda is that most of our national team players are based domestically, so I get a lot more access with them and the squad gets a lot more time together,” McKinstry said. “For example, Ghana manager Avram Grant may have only three or four days to work with his squad before an international because so many of them come from different clubs and countries. I get a few months where I can organize the players better and have them come together several times before the match to get ready. That’s the advantage we have with Rwanda.”
McKinstry hopes to capitalize on this advantage by instilling the fundamentals of the game into his players to create one of the most technically sound sides in Africa.
McKinstry believes that “getting the basics down is what is most vital to Rwanda’s success in African football, and we are displaying that already.”
“Listening to television commentators during our matches, they will frequently commend us on our team shape and say how organized our shape is. That is one of the keys to our success.”
In terms of the state of African football as a whole, McKinstry notes the problems that exist within certain federations in Africa, but is of the opinion that changes are occurring in the continent, combating these issues.
“Right now, the biggest problem in African football comes from the organization of it, some federations are definitely organized better than others,” McKinstry said. “Fortunately for me, Sierra Leone was rather well-organised and the system set up here in Rwanda is fantastic, so I’ve had good experiences with it. Changes are being made across Africa though, and the problem certainly isn’t as bad as it has been in the past.”
Currently top of their 2017 AFCON qualifying group after a 1-0 win in Mozambique on June 14th, McKinstry is determined to guide his Rwandan team into their second ever AFCON.
“We are making real progress in Rwanda and have gotten off to a good start in my first few months,” McKinstry said
“We still have some work to do here. There may be other job offers back in the U.K. down the line, but right now I’m in no hurry to get to them.”
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